Before the race in Atlanta on Sunday, Joey Logano was handed a penalty by NASCAR for wearing an illegal glove on his left hand to gain a performance advantage. Logano was told that he would start the race from the rear despite him getting second place on the field. The Penske driver was also asked to serve a pass-through penalty under green. However, his troubles got worse as NASCAR announced an addition to his penalty for the same offense.
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Now Logano will also have to pay a fine of $10,000 after he started the race from the rear and then served a pass-through penalty in the race. But why is NASCAR being so harsh for a glove?
This is what Elton Sawyer explained before they decided to hand Logano the fine penalty.
Why NASCAR handed Joey Logano a double penalty?
“If you just take exactly what happened on the racetrack from a competition perspective and trying to enhance the performance on the racetrack, obviously we see time and time again at superspeedways and other events where the drivers will stick their hand out the window. That’s not something that we’ve been all that alarmed about,” he said.
Sawyer explained that when drivers take it to a level when they’ve modified safety equipment, as in Logano’s case with the glove, they penalize them the way they did with Logano in the race. But then again, there was a modification of safety equipment.
Could additional penalties be handed out for @joeylogano‘s illegal glove at @ATLMotorSpdwy?#NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer weighs in ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/GwGeacnb6r
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) February 27, 2024
“We look at this very hard, we take it very seriously. There’s been numerous meetings over time about safety of the car, the equipment, and the drivers,” Sawyer continued. “And when you take and alter that, that will be something we’ll discuss today, if it needs to have some additional penalty added to that.”
Sawyer further clarified that the penalties on the racetrack were strictly down to performance reasons and the advantage Joey Logano gained with his modified glove. But the penalty that Sawyer was talking about discussing, which turned out to be an additional $10,000 fine, was purely because of altering an SFI piece of apparel.
