NOT CHEATING? NOT TRYING! How NASCAR Drivers and Teams Bent the Rules 

The thing about Knaus: remember the Garage 56 NASCAR entry at Le Mans last year? Chad Knaus was the mastermind behind that. They turned one of the greatest rulebenders in modern NASCAR, and let him throw that rulebook out the window. And people were surprised it was outpacing GTE entries.

Logano's glove was used to close up the gap between the window net and the A Pillar to prevent or minimize the amount of air getting in to the greenhouse. They weren't adding drag, they were removing it.

I was a local dirt track racer for many years, and the best piece of advice I ever got was from an old school mechanic. “Son, there’s 1,000 ways to cheat. If you get caught, there’s still 999 other ways.”

To use an old NASCAR quote: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't winning." Every team works within the gray areas of the rule book to gain edges on their competitors. And yes, you're saying Chad Knaus correctly.

Talking about Smokey, I did get the chance in 1995 at a NASCAR truck race to sit and have a dinner with him. I got to hear some great stories of "creative rulebook reading" all these years later I am still amazed he took time to answer some dumb kids questions and treated me like I was just one of the guys.

It is NOT cheating...it is a "creative interpretation of the rules"

NASCAR no longer allows teams to keep their trophy if the car doesn't meet the rules in post-race technical inspection. Since 2019 NASCAR has disqualified 29 cars and relegated them to last in the running order with just 1 point earned, stripping them of their finishing position, stage points, etc.

The 30 lb helmet used at qualifying weigh in was my favourite. Swap helmets during the race and you are 30 lbs lighter. Genius.

14:36 ok that just blew my mind up. Big Iron man was a NASCAR driver?!?!

I'm a fellow Brit, but Smokey Unick was a legend. The time they took the petrol tank out of his car and he just started it and drove off was hilarious

The guy that owns Smokey's chevelle now did a side by side measuring. It had alot of aero tricks. Bumpers were modified but width of the car was stock.

There were sooo many more “innovations” on that Chevelle than you mentioned. Most were aero massaging of the body work. Spoiler lip over the back window. Wheel openings shaped around the tires. Grille flush to the opening. Bumpers tucked beautifully to the car. Perfect fitting windshield mouldings that also extended around the A pillars. The bottom of the car was almost perfectly flat like an F1 car. There were body lines hidden at the edges of the paint lines to direct air around the car. And more and more. The car was a technological masterpiece and would be considered one even today.

This is what I miss about racing today. The sheer creativity is what made it fascinating.

On his book NASCAR for Dummies, Mark Martin told a story about crew chief Gary Nelson. While working for DiGard Racing during the mid-1970s, Nelson filled the frame of Darrell Waltrip's car with buckshot. During the race, Waltrip flipped a secret switch in the car that released the buckshot, thus reducing the weight of the car. Nelson would go on to take several executive roles in NASCAR, such as Cup Series Director, Vice President of Competition, and Vice President of Research and Development. As someone once said: "The best way to spot a cheater is to hire a cheater."

Marty Robbins also known in music circles as the man who introduced the 'fuzz' guitar effect to the world. A session guitarist played through a faulty mixing desk, Robbins decided to keep it in the finished track and the rest is history.

Actually, Smokey's BIG change on the dreaded Chevelle was to re-position the body atop the frame, dropping the body by raising the frame within it. The car sat DOWN on the frame. I know, as my uncle Curtis drove it and I was there in the pits at Daytona and Atlanta. What nobody realized at the time was tht Yunick understood a LOT more about aero than anybody else in NASCAR (or F1, at that time). EVERY single place where the body was mated to another item, from the front bumper to the grille to the windshield, was smoothed for cleaner air flow. Then there was the "spoiler" at the rear of the roof and the most advanced "roll cage" that was more frame than reinforcement (go online and you can find pictures; compare them with other 1967 stockers and you'll see how far afield this thing was). Curtis loved it...until it tried to kill him. Smokey had been doing htis stuff for years...like alumnum bumpers that were steel plated before the chrome got applied. These things were so flimsy you could have folded them. When Pontiac was serious about racing, there were a LOT of aluminum parts like inner fenders and floorboards. Actually, there weren't very many truly BIG engines, but there were quite a few that were about 20cid oversize...just ask King Richard about Daytona 4 July, 1984 and the 1983 500. NO MORE TUNES!!!

The Gen5 car, aka The Car Of Tomorrow, had strict rules in place about body modifications. But at the 2008 All-Star Race, the 77 car of former Indycar star Sam Hornish Jr found a workaround by changing the angle of rear axle housing. This gave the car a noticeable yaw, even on the straights. This helped generate side-force, giving the car more grip in the corners, meaning the car could have a loose setup. And as a famous line from Days of Thunder said, “Loose is fast, and on the edge, you’re out of control.”

My Dad raced stocks, lower classes and even up here on the West Coast of Canada, we knew about Smokey Yunick. Fun Video, thanks. And a big fan of Marty Robbins, on of his modified race cars was named after one of his songs, "Devil woman". And purple. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.

When I heard Marty Robbins I imagined Brandon Herrera showing up.

Slap shoes (another channel that covers NASCAR) has said Smokey wrote at least 50% of the rule book by breaking rules before they on the books

May be a “cross the pond” translation thing. Drivers put their hands up on superspeedways to reduce drag by keeping airflow out of the cockpit. Lagono’s glove was webbed meaning he block more air. The issue wasn’t really the webbing per se, it was the glove had an unapproved modification after it was made. Meaning the material of the webbing hadn’t been safety tested (fire proofed). Also, nascar has a “table of shame” again. Anything found to be out of spec gets displayed the following race for EVERYONE to see with the reference item, test jig, template, etc alongside. Oh, if you really want scandal, I’d suggest looking up MWR (micheal waltrip racing) if you haven’t already. There’s an entire video there🤣

Reminds me of F1. Particularly during the Ross Brawn years. He can spot a grey area from a hundred paces. It's why he's got the job he has. Poacher turned gamekeeper. Really interesting to learn about a series I know pretty much only through you. Happy to keep on learning!

Also, one of the great NASCAR pseudo-cheating stories is about the 1997 Jeff Gordon T-Rex/Jurassic Park car. The short version: Everything was legal, but it found every grey area and loophole it could. It ended up being the fastest car out there and Gordon won the 1997 The Winston (the All-Star race). Story has it that Bill France told Gordon's crew chief Ray Evernham that the car was illegal. Evernham responded basically saying "No it's not. Everything we did was within the rules." And France replied with "Well, it won't be tomorrow."

There are a lot of good stories of a similar bent about Penske/Donahue during their Trans Am days.

Smoking was a legend. He found so many loopholes in the rule book... lol. He was to engineering the inside of the car to Adrian Newey is to outside of the car.

NASCAR does take away wins. At the 2022 M&M's Fan Appreciation 400, Denny Hamlin won the race, with then-teammate Kyle Busch finishing second. Both Joe Gibbs Racing cars were disqualified after post-race inspection discovered illegal aerodynamic modifications on the front fascia; as a result, third-place finisher Chase Elliott was declared the race winner. Hamlin became the first NASCAR Cup Series winner to be disqualified since 1960, when Emmanuel Zervakis was stripped of his win at Wilson Speedway for an oversized fuel tank. It was later revealed that the front fascias of Hamlin and Busch's cars had a layer of clear packaging vinyl that was not removed prior to the application of the paint scheme wrap.

This is one of my absolute favorite topics in motorsports and obviously Nascar has the most stories. If you need more there are so many out there. Nascar for whatever reason would only measure ride height and weight pre race. So teams used to stack wooden shims in the springs so once the suspension loaded up it would crush the wood and the rode height dropped. As hard as the weight teams would used wheels that were 2 or 3 times the weight of a normal wheel. The car would handle like junk for the first run until pit stops rolled around. Magically after putting a new set of wheels on the car was a rocketship. Or teams would have a fake radio box or an entire helmet completely made of lead to weigh the car then swap it on the grid before the start of the race. Speaking of Junior Johnson his favorite wheight shedding method was to fill the frame rail with lead shot and then drop it through a hidden door in the frame rail. This became so prevalent that the track owner of Martinsville was driving himself carzy trying to figure out how his track was full of little lead balls after the race was over every year.

My grandmother lived through the great depression. She saved and reused everything possible, including reusing the same Saran Wrap many, many, many times over. One of her favorite things was feeding family. Food came out of nowhere all the time.

As soon as you said "king of cheaters" I knew it was going to be Smokey. I never watched a NASCAR rzce, but this guy is such a legend I already knew him.

As a fan of Nascar, it’s more of stretching the rules, technically it is somewhat legal. There was an instant recently in Pocono where the first 2 were disqualified and the 3 rd place person was given the win

There's something hilariously ironic about a guy who had a name that sounds like "eunuch" having some of the biggest balls in the business.

This was great. Smokey didn't invent the rulebook, but he's why it's so thick. You should do an episode on Leonard Wood and Wood Brothers Racing.

Junior Johnson as an owner, the master of 'Innovation'.

I love hearing NASCAR stuff from British RU-vidrs, has a different flavor to it especially compared to your regular NASCAR RU-vidrs.

This video made me smile like a great big smiley thing. Got to love the ingenuity and persistence of these guys

Aidan: most excellent video! I like all of your videos but this one was far and above! I love the NASCAR cheating stories. Have watched dozens of them from drivers, crew members, officials, and family on Dale Earnhardt Jr's podcast. Stories of shot falling out of the car onto the track to reduce weight, changeable angle spoilers, and the nitrous oxide for qualifying are some of the best ones I've ever heard. Smokey Yunnick stories are some of the wildest, funniest, and least believable ones you'll ever hear! These people are some of the most creative and clever people I've ever heard of. I read Smokey's book "The Best Damn Garage in Town" about 20 years ago (when a hurricane relieved me of power for a couple of days) and I highly recommend it. He managed to come home with large coffee cans full of cash to the tune of $125k which he later used to start the garage. He held patents for automotive improvements and was just a really interesting guy overall. I only wish that I'd stopped in the Best Damn Garage in Town once to meet him and shake his hand before he passed. Keep up the good work! (Also, yes you do pronounce the "K" in "Knaus" LOL, you said his name perfectly, I'd love to see an AI get THAT right!)

There is a great interview driver Darrell Waltrip did with Dale Earnhardt Jr, where Waltrip goes into detail about bending the rules on the track.

Smokey Yunick has gotten coverage on here plenty and rightfully so, but I really feel like Junior Johnson needs his own video. Darrell Waltrip's car for the All Stat race at Charlotte in the 1980s is almost it's own video IMO

Lead shot in the rollbar cage is another good one. There’s so much to look forward to. Denny Hamlin I believe did lose a win and was DQ’d in 2022 or 2023 but I can’t remember what year for modifiers to the bumper on the car

More stuff like this please, we’re even willing to forgive the fluffed audio lines for interesting videos like this, nice to see more non F1 videos

Love your videos, keeps me entertained in the perpetual traffic jams coming home from work. Would love to see vids on The Dakar and JGTC/Super GT as well.

There was an old saying about Elvis: "Before anyone else did anything, Elvis did everything." Yeah, that. Smokey Yunick.

Waltrip telling Junior Johnson stories is also worth the time. Some epic cheating in there

Michael Waltrip in the 2007 Daytona 500 qualifying is another ine to look at. He used ulillegal fuel laced with rocket fuel, jet fuel, or another additive and was fined $100,000, his crew cheif banned indefinately, his car seized, and docked 100 points. He is currently the only driver to ever start the year with negetive points.

F1 were freezing their fuel as well, back in the day to get around the fuel bag limits, so now the regs state that the fuel can no longer be more than 10 degrees below ambient temperature when being placed in the car.

This was pure genius Aidan!!!

The primary reason NASCAR doesn't DQ winners has to do with Richard Petty's 199th Cup win, using an oversized engine. The Frances were incensed, but they were not going to a) disqualify their most popular driver and b) take away a win that put him one closer to the magical, unobtainable 200 wins number. So, NASCAR used the "the winner on the track is the winner" theory to justify punishing Petty with the loss of points, and the team with lost points, suspensions, and a fine. Joey Logano's "glovegate" is an example of how, with essentially spec cars, the smallest thing gets blown out of proportion. Notice how thick the webbing is on the side window nets? It's partially because it blocks air from coming into the car, creating drag. But there's a large opening at the front of the net, between it and the windshield pillar, and by a driver sticking their hand in front of it, blocks the air coming in. Logano added fabric strips between the fingers, and the thumb, so that when he put his hand over the hole, and spread his fingers, it covered more of it. NASCAR didn't have a rule about blocking the air with your hand, so they had to improvise and use a rule that states that all safety equipment must be unaltered-including gloves

Hey Aiden, I really enjoyed this one! Congrats on 101K+ subs btw. Can't wait for more in this vein!

The Nigels's at Toyota's rally team had the greatest cheat going, even having the engineering praised by the FIA as they disqualified and banned the car.

If you haven’t seen the Dinner with Racers episode on Smokey Yunick’s Chevelle, they go and measure the car. They detail as much as they can compared to a similar era Chevelle that Bobby Allison raced. Talk about attention to detail! 😮🤩🤩💥🏁

I'm not big into bike racing either. However! King of the Baggers is fantastic racing. 620 pound hogs getting hammered around track getting extra sketchy.

Jimmy Johnson and Chad Knaus were two of the biggest cheaters in NASCAR. I remember one race where Knaus told Jimmy to back the car into the wall if he won. Among many others.

Great vid. Very interesting, I didn't know any of this about NASCAR. Oh and Marty Robbins is a legend! Great music.

awesome video. Please could you do a video on the controversies surrounding the 1996 Audi A4 Quartro in BTCC

You should do a video on dakar and how they moved bc of terrorism and then moved again bc of greenwashing

There are 2 great automobile club videos on RU-vid about loopholes and grey areas, especially with *that* ACO Porsche, and they all Swear to the "Book of Smokey" at the beginning

You hit the nail on the head - bending the rules or finding a loophole is fine but flagrant deception is not. Darrell Waltrip has told the story about having lead bbs in the frame of his car that he released during the race to make his car lighter. Then for post race weigh in, the crew handed a lead hat to Darrell. Or the moveable spoiler on Harry Gant's car that would lay down during the race but would stand up to the proper angle during post race inspection. Harry won 3 races in a row.

Maybe culture is just different in Europe. The attitude of if you aint cheating, you aint trying is something praised among all motorsports. We love it here seeing who can bend the rules in their favor, that is until one guy starts dominating 😅

Also lawnmower racing, didn't that get into one of the ToCA/regional variants Race Driver games? I swear it was Race Driver 2 or 3 that had actual lawnmowers to race in, the sheer variety of those games with the formats they were on and you got a bit of everything, the original ToCA/regional variants Race Driver even had NASCAR ovals and a late model as well for some off brand NASCAR fun too, including our Rockingham

Another NASCAR rule bending moment was the flexgate scandal in 2018 where Stewart-Haas Racing manipulated the braces on the rear window of Kevin Harvick's car to flex at high speeds to give the #4 an aerodynamic edge, which was a loopjole

Mario Andretti lost the 1981 Indy 500 four months after finishing the race.

Do you plan on touching on McLaren's revolving lineup of Indy drivers and what's going on there? I dabble in Indy and am a long time F1fan that doesn't understand how that type of thing happens.

0:55 Need to do a video on professional drag racing too

15:08 restrictor plates did not exist as a mandatory part until late 1987.

I like this Smokey Yunich guy. Reckon we'd have been mates.

Bruh. The country singing was on point. Cheers from California. Spot-fucking-on. Edit: Chad Knaus is definitely a cheater. How many times Kenseth finished top 3 with Johnson winning really ground my gears in my formative years. 🤬 (oh, and yes, the K is pronounced in Knaus.)

14:37 No! That's just silly! No more of that. Now, move along!

You could do a vid on Swamp Buggy Racing. This was a staple of the 1980's on TNN ( The Nashville Network ) Another would be lawn mower racing ( this really exists )

The fuel story is better than that. He was given a list of fails to fix. He drove off saying to add one more, fuel tank still out, and drove it to his shop, up the road from the track.

One of my all time favorite stories is Darrell Waltrip putting lead buckshot in his frame rails to meet the weight requirements and using a series of trap doors to drop them on the track during the race.

There's actually one other form or motorsport you haven't covered but would probably enjoy. NHRA Drag racing

I wish I had more hours in my week. Between F1, the WEC, and IMSA I don't have much viewing time left for NASCAR. Yes, I'm one of those Aussie's that loves American cars driving in "circles". But hey, at least when I get time to watch NASCAR I can watch it on their RU-vid channel as replay just hours after the race sans-ads. I'm not sure if every country has access to those replays, but if you can find them on NASCAR's channel it's worth checking out because there's more to NASCAR than most non-American's realise.

The bar homda extra fuel tank comes to mind. But im pretty sure it broke existing rules.

The France/Kennedy family running NASCAR HATED Smokey Yunick so much it's unlikely he'll ever be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame...he also came up with an earlier version of the softer walls used now and Bill France Sr refused when he found out how expensive it would cost.

Have you done a video on the NHRA or World of Outlaws?

Aiden, no rfid... They use a huge sealed lightroom to measure everything with lasers.

World of outlaws sprints or late models. give it some coverage it deserves it

Smokey was rumored to have said that he could have driven to Tallahassee without that fuel tank. (250 miles)

Starting at 15C you get roughly .0013% more fuel for every degree of temperature you drop for the same amount of volume.

Logano's glove was intended to keep air from entering the cockpit, which would eliminate drag.

If you leaned on smokeys or some of Junior Johnsons cars... that were acid dipped if you leaned on it you would dent it ! I belive i still have a old diecast 1:24 scale ol marty robbins 1973 Dodge Charger wild yellow and purple colors ..need to find that 😁

I've given up on NASCAR. I used to watch, waiting for a crash basically. Like every other human being who watches it. No one cares who wins, its just who crosses the line upside down on fire. I realised I was wasting valuable time. Time that could be well spent wa**ing tetris.

Hold on just a damn second... U.S. temperature is "Old Money?" We didn't whoop British ass in the 18th Century to be called "Old Money" over here, Nigel!

If you're going to cheat. Make sure you cheat fairly

3:30 forgot to edit out a little piece there

I don't think you've done any videos on the Supercars Championship in Australia

F1 has constant cheating as well, but there's a cultural difference. When an f1 team gets caught, everyone acts surprised and angry and practically takes it to court, and for decades even the modt obvious cheats will be denied by the team and governing body (or disputed ages after it stopped mattering, like brawn) In nascar, the response historically was "maybe i did maybe i didnt, but that shit was fast, right?" And they get as much hate as they get admiration. Look at Junior Johnson, dude was a legend and his entire schtick was finding loopholes and cheaty tactics. There also TENDS to be a bit less politics, you don't have stuff like the double diffuser, blown diffuser, das, etc. being a topic for ages and debated and whined about. It tends to be that the hammer goes down once something is found, and the team will whine, but nascar goes "ahhhhhh nooo fuck you lmao" and stuff returns to normal. There's no real "erm actually I own a huge share in f1 so maybe we can just use this for the rest of the year/reg period? Wink?" (Let's be partially fair here - this is also a lot of american attitudes vs european attitudes involved here as well)

IMO NASCAR has come a long way, but the thing that still drives me crazy about the organization is they still don’t hand out penalties for incident responsibility like literally every other professional racing series in the world. Basically you can drop kick a slower car in front of you with zero repercussions.

Crazy how you forget to mention that two cars that finished first and second were disqualified just last year.

In nascar, especially in the early days, cheating wasn’t just part of the sport, cheating was the sport.

BIG IRON MENTIONED

Small nitpick Aidan. The citing for the Dale Earnhardt Jr picture isn't accurate. Just thought I'd let you know and thank you for covering NASCAR.

Aidan 1992 Nascar cup season and aftermath review when?

The original Smokie video is a good listen. Re-release it with just a stock background.

Thanks!

Smokey "Loophole" Yunick

Well its an interesting story another car is the T-Rex car if you want another good rule bending story that Chad Knaus pulled off and yes the K is pronounced and there are fans who don't like that NASCAR has gotten as strict as european racing series or even trying to be more like em i actually enjoy the change though call me a rare breed or whatever

When they would bend the bottom of the rear quarter panels so the template wouldn’t fit 😂

Europeans think it's just turning left, you should get your arses on iRacing and give it a try it ain't as easy as they make it look

This is one of the things that makes people like motorsports over regular sports: seeing teams exploit the rules to come up with clever ideas to gain an advantage over their competitors. Yes, the actual racing usually ends up being crap compared to motorsports categories with more strict regulations but again it's stuff like this that makes people like motorsports over other types of sports. When was the last time you saw a footballer cut his hair to be more aerodynamic or watched a marathon runner shed their blood and take a massive dump before the start of a marathon because weight reduction?