Despite NASCAR’s Heavy Penalty, Dale Jr Loved Joey Logano’s Creative Illegal Glove Tactic

NASCAR teams and drivers always like to have an ace up their sleeves to work with, even if they are rolling in a Next-Gen car. NASCAR has somewhat leveled out the playing field with a similar package for all the teams to work with. However, this did not stop the teams from finding cheeky ideas or working around the gray areas that they could work to their advantage. And this is exactly what Joey Logano and his team did with the webbed glove antics at both the Daytona and Atlanta qualifying rounds.

While Logano was lucky enough to pull this tactic at Daytona, he was apprehended by officials after the Atlanta qualifying rounds. But now, after further investigation, the driver has been fined $10,000 for violating safety regulations. The NASCAR community was divided on this topic, with many of them calling the Penske driver a cheat. Of course, it was a creative idea to bend the safety rules, and this is what impressed Dale Earnhardt Jr the most.

Dale Jr, being a driver himself, understood the need for Logano and his team to use these cheeky tactics. Even lauded him for this stunt in his podcast show, Dale Jr Download.

“You know you have basically no creativity or flexibility, when teams have nowhere else to look for an advantage, they are going to find these quirky little spaces to work in right, like gloves… Maybe Joey’s like I’ve been sticking my hand out the window, I’ve been doing this for you guys for several years now, what if we did something to the gloves and made it even better. Maybe Joey had this idea who knows,” Jr said.

He even went on to add how drivers came up with similar tactics and ideas to work around the netted window. “Teams years ago came to Daytona with clear vinyl, swen behind the window net and of course first time somebody saw that they are like, get that out of here, you can’t run that. So this is what happens when you have a race car and you control every inch of it.”

While Logano and his team escaped with a hefty fine, Stewart-Haas Racing has been handed a huge penalty for fielding cars with illegal parts.

L-1 level penalty for SHR’s #10 and #41 cars

The 2024 season was supposed to be a step up from the previous iterations and disappointments for SHR. However, it seems like the team has not learned from their past mistakes, and these have come back to bite them. Two SHR drivers, Ryan Preece and Noah Gragson, were stripped of 35 points. Officials had already confiscated roof rail deflectors from both cars and have now brandished a severe penalty.

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With the points dedication in place, Preece now officially has zero points and sits 36th in the standings. He is currently 47 points behind the playoff cut-off line. Noah Gragson, on the other hand, is in deep trouble with this penalty. The No. 10 car is on negative six points and sits 43rd in the standings, 53 points behind the cut-off line. Not the start that the SHR team would have hoped for the 2024 season.

This is indeed unfortunate news for Stewart-Haas Racing. They will have to dig deep in order to mount a comeback and get back into contention for the rest of the season.