Auto racing is about more than just winning—it’s about finding that competitive edge in the gray areas where rules can’t always reach. NASCAR, like other motorsports, has seen teams penalized for breaking rules, but these are just the cases that were caught.

For years, teams have been tweaking setups, knowing the risk. Despite strict inspections and penalties, they’ve continued to push boundaries, with the goal being simple: don’t get caught. Even a former NASCAR race director admitted they couldn’t catch every offender. This has been the game in the Cup garage for decades.

David Hoots reveals how NASCAR teams used to operate before the Next-Gen era

“If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying” is an old saying in the sport. And the drivers and teams certainly lived by this in trying to sneak a few upgrades or tweaks that could work wonders for them. If we are to compile the list of cheating instances in NASCAR, we could be here sitting all day talking about them.

David Hoots was one of the few who called the shots from the race tower and in the capacity of race director. His experience in the sport has spanned more than two decades and came to an end in 2019 after a massive layoff wave. However, Dale Earnhardt Jr., like he usually does, invited the veteran official on his show and was curious to know about his work profile. Hoots tried to explain the way he used to police the garage and what the equation was between the officials and the teams.

“I won’t say it was a game, but it was somewhat of a game. You got caught on this; now you put five items in the car; they caught three; what two did you just miss? And so you would think that would be going on. And I think that was some of the camaraderie, the respect. You got caught? Okay, I got caught.” Hoots said on the Dale Jr. Download.

Not only that, he did take shots at NASCAR and the idea of parity racing with the Next-Gen car. “The homologated car that they have today has taken a lot of that away from it.” Unlike the good old days, the teams have to get their parts and pieces from a single source vendor. But was this enough to keep the teams at bay and not flout the rules? Not really. In fact, some examples from this year show the teams are still willing to go the extra mile.

Cheating incidents this season so far

Kyle Larson and the #5 were caught in the act for an unapproved adjustment to the roof rails for the Talladega race early in the season. Larson lost his qualifying spot, his crew chief got ejected, and he had to serve a pass-through penalty. While this wasn’t a blatant attempt to cheat but rather just some tweaks to get the car set up the way the team wanted.

However, the same can’t be said for Joey Logano and his webbed gloves that he used for qualifying rounds at Daytona and Atlanta. NASCAR was only able to get hold of this trick in Atlanta. The glove used by the Penske star had webbing between the thumb and index finger, which he used to deviate air from the window to gain an aerodynamic advantage. Not sure how big of an impact this had, but he did win the pole at the Daytona 500.

NASCAR fined Logano $10,000 and was sent to the back of the field despite winning the pole for the Las Vegas race. Meanwhile, Stewart Haas Racing had problems of their own after the Atlanta race. The No. 10 Ford of Noah Gragson and No. 41 of Ryan Preece were found to have illegal roof rails on their cars. Unlike Larson, the two drivers were docked 35 driver and owner points. This was indeed a big blow to the team, who were desperate for a winning result.

These were some of the notable cases of teams trying to bend the rules. So it’s fair to say cheating or inventions won’t be going away from NASCAR racing anytime soon.