Given the restrictive nature of the ethos of ‘stock’ car racing, which originally was aimed at taking cars straight out of the showroom and on to the racetrack, crew chiefs and mechanics have toiled to find ever more ingenious ways of making their cars run faster.
The penalty handed out to Team Penske’s Joey Logano, fined $10,000 for wearing webbed gloves to restrict air coming into his cockpit and thereby reduce drag during qualifying in Atlanta, is a perfect example of discovering enterprising solutions that have a material impact (quite literally in this case!).
We can go back to NASCAR’s very first ‘strictly stock’ race in 1949, held over 150 miles on a ¾-mile dirt track in Charlotte, North Carolina for a first instance of cheating. Glenn Dunaway won the race, finishing three laps ahead of Jim Roper, in Herbert Westmoreland's 1947 Ford.
But the car, which had been a genuine moonshine-runner, was found to be running illegal rear springs and he was thrown to the bottom of the results.
A lawsuit then followed, which was thrown out of court, which allowed NASCAR founder Bill France Sr to be emboldened in handing out penalties.
Source: Autosport