Team Penske’s hearing before the National Motorsports Final Appeals Officer, which was to have been held Wednesday night, has been rescheduled for 7:45 a.m. May 9, NBC Sports has learned. The meeting needed to be rescheduled because of an illness to the Final Appeals Officer.
This will be the final appeal for Team Penske in this matter.
NASCAR suspended crew chief Paul Wolfe for three races and fined him $65,000 and docked Brad Keselowski and Team Penske 35 points each because Keselowski’s car failed the Laser Inspection Station after a fifth-place finish March 19 at Phoenix Raceway.
The team sat Wolfe out at Auto Club Speedway, counting toward one of the three races the penalty called for him to miss, but he was back on the pit box for Martinsville — where Keselowski won — Texas and Bristol as the matter went through the appeals process.
At this time, the team plans to have Wolfe at Richmond International Raceway this weekend.
The National Motorsports Appeals Panel upheld NASCAR’s penalty after an April 12 hearing.
A hearing before Final Appeals Officer Bryan Moss was scheduled for 6 p.m. ET today before a need to reschedule arose.
Car owner Roger Penske said after Keselowski’s win at Martinsville that the team was challenging the consistency of NASCAR’s procedures. The team claims that it was permitted only one attempt to pass post-race inspection on the LIS platform while others have gotten multiple attempts previously.
“I think that consistency is really important to me from an officiating perspective,’’ Penske said April 2 at Martinsville. “We’ll have a chance to go and talk about our side of the story. We might get nothing, but I think at least maybe we can make the sport better.”
