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NASCAR has not determined if Joe Gibbs cars will be penalized for splitter issue

Food City 500 - Practice

BRISTOL, TN - MARCH 15: View of the NASCAR logo during practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway on March 15, 2014 in Bristol, Tennessee. (Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images)

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NASCAR has not determined if to penalize the teams of Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards for issues with their splitters discovered before Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, told “The Morning Drive” on Tuesday that the splitters arrived on a NASCAR truck at NASCAR’s R&D Center late Monday.

Officials ordered the Joe Gibbs Racing teams to change splitters during inspection before the race. Only the team’s No. 20 car, driven by Erik Jones in place of Matt Kenseth, did not have to change its splitter.

Taking splitters has been done before this season. NASCAR took the splitters from both Team Penske cars before the Michigan race in August for further examination. Neither team was penalized in that case.

No determination has been made on if the Gibbs cars will be penalized, O’Donnell told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“We’re still looking into that,’' he said. “We’ll look at that this morning, similar to what we’ve done in the past. Didn’t look exactly right to us. We’ve had that in the past where there’s been nothing wrong and it fits within the rule book. If it’s something we need to react to, we will. We do that from time to time. If it ends up meeting with the spec and we have to adjust something for next year, we will. That’s why we took possession of them this time.’'

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