During a series of early morning posts Friday on Twitter, Rodney Childers, crew chief for Kevin Harvick, revealed several details about his team’s penalty at Texas Motor Speedway.
NASCAR effectively stripped Harvick’s victory Wednesday and knocked the team from the Championship 4 after finding an illegally mounted spoiler on the No. 4 Ford. According to Childers, the team gained 4 counts of downforce by offsetting the part to the right, or 0.04 percent of the car’s total downforce.
Childers also posted that the team made the decision to move the spoiler after watching many teams shift their decklids and spoilers to the right in the previous 1.5-mile race at Kansas Speedway two weeks earlier. Childers said it was too late for the team to move the decklid for the Texas race.
Suspended from the next two races, Childers said he is working from the shop this weekend rather than travel to Phoenix. Though he wouldn’t have been allowed in the garage, Childers would have been permitted to be in the grandstands or the suites. He hinted in a previous tweet that he might attend the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Childers also posted that there are no hard feelings with NASCAR about the penalty.