Dale Earnhardt Jr. speculates on Hendrick decision to not appeal NASCAR penalty of Alex Bowman

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was surprised to learn that Hendrick Motorsports wouldn’t appeal NASCAR’s decision to penalize Alex Bowman at the Charlotte Roval. On Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt explained why the team didn’t appeal the decision that eliminated Bowman from the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

“With everything on the line, this is Alex’s championship hopes. They rest on the idea that they can somehow appeal this, and they didn’t even try to appeal it,” Earnhardt said. “I called around a little bit yesterday looking for some information. I was told that there was no understanding as to how the car was light, what might have come off of it.

“The team at one point yesterday was still as confused as the rest of us. That was a bit surprising because the teams are good enough, all the guys and the technical crew chief, engineers, if the car is light, they can probably look at the car and spend 20 minutes in the garage and go, ‘Yup, there it is. There’s the problem.’ And still hours later, they were like dumbfounded or just still unsure as to how this could happen.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes Hendrick didn’t think it could win appeal

“I’m going to assume that there’s nothing significant of weight that came off of the car. The car was beyond the tolerance that NASCAR allowed, and even if it’s half a pound, it’s beyond the tolerance. If they can’t argue that there was some parts and pieces that would make up for that weight loss, then there’s no way to win the appeal. Hendrick must look at it and go, ‘There’s no way we can win this. This is an obvious mistake.'”

The No. 48 car for Hendrick Motorsports was disqualified in a technical inspection on Sunday. Competition officials determined that the car did not meet the weight requirement, and it led to Alex Bowman dropping out of the top eight of the playoff standings.

“Hendrick Motorsports will not appeal the disqualification of the No. 48 car following Sunday’s race at the Charlotte ROVAL,” the team said in a statement. “NASCAR allows a clear margin to account for the difference in pre and post-race weight. After a thorough review by our team and the sanctioning body, we simply did not give ourselves enough margin to meet the post-race requirement. Although unintentional, the infraction was avoidable. We are extremely disappointed to lose a playoff spot under these circumstances and apologize to our fans and partners.”