The NASCAR Cup Series field is down to 8 drivers after the conclusion of the Charlotte ROVAL race: Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Joey Logano. While the expected championship contenders have dominated the playoffs, some unexpected names also pulled out impressive performances. For example, Rick Hendrick & Co.’s Alex Bowman kept progressing consistently in the first two playoff rounds.

However, after a successful round of 12, the #48 made it to the top 8, only to get disqualified later. Post the Charlotte Roval race, Bowman suffered a DQ as his car failed the post-race weight inspection and that’s how Logano claimed his spot. Now many expected Bowman’s team owner, Rick Hendrick, to appeal the decision. Surprisingly, he did not! Why?

HMS released an official statement that read, “Hendrick Motorsports will not appeal the disqualification of the No. 48 car following Sunday’s race at the Charlotte ROVAL. 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.” This statement caught many by surprise.

Even NASCAR veteran Dale Earnhardt Jr. was surprised by HMS’s recent decision. On a new episode of the Dale Jr. Download, he opined, “There was a video of him jumping the curb; something’s fallen off the car, maybe so I assumed when I saw that video, ‘Aww man, they are gonna appeal. They might win cause they have lost these parts. Maybe they can figure out what these parts are, weigh these parts and say, ‘Hey here’s the weight come off the car’.”

In one part of the race, the #48 car actually launched off over the curb before scrapping the wall. Here’s the incident Junior is speaking about:

“So they crashed and parts were falling off that car. So I mean, parts fall off cars, right? They continue racing, they did and go up and finish well and they were light, they would get a break on that because you could see the [parts] fall out that car. So I’m thinking the same thing with Alex. If he lost the weight on the racetrack, they are going to peel the hell out of this. They’re going to get Alex will get back in.”

According to Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mr. H & Co.’s experienced crew chiefs and engineers would have, within a 20-minute inspection of the car, noticed what was missing. Although maybe that’s not the case and something else led to the weight reduction. But what? Even HMS probably doesn’t know.

“I am going to assume that there is nothing significant weight that came off the car, the car was beyond the tolerance that NASCAR allowed. Even if it’s half a pound, it’s beyond the tolerance. And if they can’t argue that there were some parts and pieces that would make up for that weight loss, then there is no way to win the appeal. Hendrick must look at it and go, ‘Yeah, we have lost this. There’s no way we can win this. This is an obvious mistake’,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. added, further insinuating that there was something else wrong with the car.

Post NASCAR’s inspection of Bowman’s car, the weight reduced was much more than the buffer NASCAR gives. This wasn’t a sad situation for just the team but also for Bowman’s sponsor Ally, whose chief marketing officer had posted on social media that Bowman had earned a spot in the playoffs. It was surely a brutal disqualification for the team, as they even celebrated on Sunday night, claiming half the spots in the playoff field of eight.

NASCAR veterans wonder where the weight went

NASCAR released a video to explain Bowman’s disqualification. In the video, Managing Director Brad Moran said, “We give the teams every opportunity to try to meet minimum weight requirements. We also have them plug in the water and run the water through the system to make sure they’re full of water, and we re-scale it. It still didn’t meet the weight…They are allowed a half percent of weight break, which is about 17 pounds, give or take, and it was more than that.”

17 pounds seems like a lot of weight for Dale Jr’s theory to be possible. Even Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin was left confused by the significant weight reduction.

On his recent podcast episode of Actions Detrimental, Hamlin said, “It was in weight on Saturday. A lot of things happened between Saturday and Sunday… I don’t know. I’m uneducated in this moment. Again, we’re 30 minutes from the news. You’d have to lose a pretty heavy component. I’m not sure how it could. Lose significant weight. I mean, I know there’s a way. I just don’t know how or why.”

Bowman’s loss was Joey Logano’s gain, as he is now part of the top 8. But even the Penske driver was left befuddled owing to the massive weight loss mystery. He said, “It’s obvious NASCAR gives us half a percentage of the total weight of the vehicle after the race and, that rule is there for multiple reasons and in the past, there’s games played there, what they are and how it works you are talking to the wrong guy on that…I can’t speak on the specifics on how it happened, what games were played and how often does it happen and how much, I can’t answer that.”

Clearly, Rick Hendrick & Co. too doesn’t accurately know what happened to make a case for the appeal. What do you think about HMS’s decision?