NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Bowyer’s Richmond Car Legal But Close To NASCAR Limits
Clint Bowyer's Richmond car passed postrace inspection but was right on the edge of being out of bounds...
Bob Pockrass  | http://www.scenedaily.com  |  Posted September 22, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Clint Bowyer's Richmond car is being held at the NASCAR Research & Development Center. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
NASCAR has kept the Clint Bowyer car from the Sept. 11 race at Richmond International Raceway so that Richard Childress Racing chassis builders can come to the NASCAR Research & Development Center this week and see just how close to the tolerances the car was, a NASCAR spokesman confirmed.

The car passed postrace inspection and was within NASCAR’s limits but close to the boundaries following the race that determined which 12 drivers advanced to the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton told The Associated Press that Bowyer’s situation was not similar to a situation last year when NASCAR warned Hendrick Motorsports about building cars intentionally that left little or no margin for error.

“We’ve not seen anything like this from [RCR] this year, and sometimes you can get something off in a particular shop,” Pemberton told the AP. “We are trying to be proactive and we want to compare their numbers to ours.”

NASCAR takes the winner’s car and at least one other car to its research center to do more extensive measurements of the cars following a race. The non-winning car chosen for extra scrutiny is often done by random draw (which is why it’s often referred to as “the random”), but NASCAR has the option of taking any cars it wants after an event.

If Bowyer had a car outside the limits, it possibly would have cost him a spot in the Chase. Bowyer finished with a 142-point margin on 13th-place Ryan Newman. Depending on the infraction, Bowyer could have been penalized as much as 150 points if NASCAR remained consistent with past penalties.

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