Casey Mears and Jack Daniel’s Team Penalized out of Posting Good Finish

Race: Chevy Rock & Roll 400 - Venue: Richmond (Va.) International Raceway - 
Start: 38th - Finish: 30th - Points: 20th (Maintained Position)

RICHMOND, Va. – Casey Mears and the No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet Impala SS team of Richard Childress Racing rallied from their 38th-place starting position all the way to 12th before a myriad of scoring incidents and a penalty prevented them from posting a finish indicative of their strong showing.

Before the 400-lap race started under the lights of the .75-mile Richmond International Raceway oval on Saturday, two practice sessions and qualifying were held Friday. After the first practice concluded, Mears & Co. registered the 17th-fastest time. For the second practice, they were 34th on the speed chart and, when qualifying ended late Friday afternoon, they placed 38th to start outside Row 19.

When the race started on Saturday night, Mears didn’t waste any time showing the potential the No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevy had under the hood and in the chassis set-up.

Through the first 100 laps, Mears and the Todd Berrier-led team worked together via determined driving, a fast car and track bar/air pressure adjustments during pit stops to gain 23 positions en route to 15th place.

From there, Mears would run in the top 15 until hitting his highest point of 12th on lap 185. Radioing in to the crew that he didn’t have the same amount of grip through the 14-degree banked turns as before, he dropped to 22nd on a long, green-flag run.

The face of the race started changing for Mears and the No. 07 Jack Daniel’s team on a lap-320 caution. Running in the Lucky Dog position (first car one-lap down to the leaders) in 23rd place, the caution waved when RCR teammate Jeff Burton, who was on the lead lap, had a flat tire. Thinking he was the Lucky Dog, Mears was ready to go around the leaders and pit with them.

However, NASCAR said the caution was for debris, and not for the No. 31 Chevy of Burton, who was the first car one-lap down when the caution waved. Mears hit pit road for fuel, tires and adjustments to line up 25th, the fourth car one lap down, for the lap-325 restart.

The green waved, and Mears vaulted past the three drivers in front of him to be the first car one-lap down when the caution waved on lap 326. Again, the Jack Daniel’s team thought they were the Lucky Dog.

However, NASCAR ruled that the No. 07 Chevrolet Impala SS was “out of position” on the prior restart and awarded the Lucky Dog to the No. 88 Chevy, instead. For the lap-333 restart, NASCAR said Mears wasn’t lined up correctly and “posted” (stopped scoring) him until he could serve a “pass through” penalty.

Unable to get down from the high groove, and not wanting to wreck his fellow drivers getting to pit road, Mears raced around for three laps until he could serve the penalty and rejoin the action. Now two laps down in 30th place, Mears was blocked from moving up in the running order for the remainder of the race, despite running amongst the top-15 fastest cars.

Thus, he was saddled with a 30th-place finish, but retained 20th in points where he and the team are now 66 markers behind 19th place.

His fellow RCR teammates of Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick had top-10 runs finishing sixth and ninth, respectively, while Jeff Burton finished 18th.

Denny Hamlin scored a victory in front of his fellow Virginians with Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Kyle Busch following him under the checkered flag, in order, to round out the top-five finishers.

Mears and team return to Sunday afternoon racing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday, September 20. The Sylvania 300 starts at 2 p.m. (EDT) on ABC TV, with radio coverage on the Performance Racing Network and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Ch. 128. Qualifying is slated for Friday, September 18 at 3 p.m. on ESPN2, PRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio Ch. 128.

Casey Mears quotes – "We started out really good and were moving our way forward getting close to the top-10 in the first 100 laps. Then, we got a little loose in the turns for the next part and fell back some. We thought we had the Lucky Dog there when Jeff (Burton, RCR teammate) got that flat to bring out the caution, but they gave it to him, instead. So, we raced our way back and picked off three spots to be the Lucky Dog, again, for the next caution. That happened right away, but they said we were out of position on the restart and gave the Lucky Dog to the (No.) 88. When we went to restart from that, they said we didn't line up right and gave us a pass-through-penalty, which put us two laps down for the rest of the race. We had a much better car than what the finish will show; there’s just a lot that took place there with the scoring that I don’t understand. The good part is we had a good car and passed a lot of people."