NASCAR At The New Phoenix: Brad's Phone, Johnson's Appeal

NASCAR is going into this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway, we have past champions in arrears of the driver points, that same team appealing stiff penalties, and other goodies like Twitter dominating the media campaign this weekend.

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Last weekend during the Juan Pablo Montoya camp fire on the track, Brad Keselowski made headlines with his tweeted pic from within his car.

I thought it was a pretty neat thing with NASCAR getting the media attention from Brad's deed.  And I left it at that.  The media on the other hand, and others did not.

An issue came up that I had not thought about, and that was if Brad could have used his smartphone to possibly record data from the EFI system in his car.  And that's a hot subject, being how NASCAR is keeping a tight lid on the premise of tampering with the EFI systems they're using this year.

Brad had to answer as to why he had his phone in his car, and he said that having his phone in his car lets him contact family when he gets into a wreck.  He once had a frustrating experience where it took him a long time to get in touch with his family after a wreck in Fontana.

We'll see how this pans out if folks keep bringing it up and what not.  Kevin Harvick joked on Twitter that he wants to ban cell phones in the cars... because he doesn't want to have to deal with one more piece of tech in the car.

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Jimmie Johnson comes into the Phoenix race with a 23-point deficit, as in, -23 points, due to the infraction his team received in the opening weeks of Daytona's All American Race.

Hendrick Motorsports is appealing the penalty, as news on the street is that they seem to have some information that could help them get out from under this penalty.

Chad Knaus said to the press that this same car had passed inspection in the previous four NASCAR restrictor plate races.

But if you're confused why we're seeing Chad Knaus at the track at Phoenix, that's because when a team appeals a penalty, they're allowed to proceed as normal until the appeal is accepted or rejected.  And then we see what happens.

Otherwise, Chad, Jimmie and concerned parties are remaining mum about the situation until NASCAR addresses the appeal... that may not take place for a week or two.

The only details they let out were that they were penalized via a visual inspection and the car was never matched up to the template.

Huh.

-Bruce Simmons