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Johnson's car chief ejected after failed inspections

Sunday, 04 March 2018


By Kelly Crandall/ Image by Kinrade/LAT

Jimmie Johnson will compete in today's Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway without car chief Jesse Saunders.
Saunders was ejected after the No.48 Chevrolet failed pre-race inspection at the optical scanning station three times. The issue was with the rear toe. Johnson will also have to start at the rear of the field today and will lose 30 minutes of practice time next weekend when the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series visits Phoenix.

Johnson's car passed inspection on its fourth time through.
"I'm not sure, I've never been in this situation," Johnson said on the FOX broadcast about the impact for the race. "Last weekend there was some teams that had the same thing take place and they lost their car chiefs and still had good finishes. Any race team out here is bigger than one person, I guess Jesse is not going to be with us today [but] we have a lot of people who are very talented and ready to get going."



Race SageIf you go back a few years, the cars looked like they were driving sideways down the straights. On an oval with left hand turns if you set the rear end at an angle the car wants to naturally turn left. Some of the cars were 5 degrees off. (Left toe-in, right toe-out.) It got to the point of being ridiculous, and didn't look right. I believe they initially limited it to 3 degrees. Then the teams figured out that they could build slop into the mounting points and angle bushings so that they would be within the limit for tech inspection, but would shift when lateral g-force was applied on track. Now they regulate the bushings and mounting hardware too. It makes a considerable difference in handling and speed through the turns, so they push it right to the limits.

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Stock car setup by request