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May 11, 2007
#23 Team Sent Home From Truck Testing
Bill Davis Racing's #23 truck team was sent home from testing at Lowe's Motor Speedway yesterday, and won't be allowed to participate in any test sessions today after it was discovered that they had a driver other than Johnny Benson behind the wheel of the truck during the evening test session. What's the problem some might be wondering? Well, the problem is that the un-named driver in the #23 doesn't have a Nascar liscense! That was discovered when the #23 wrecked and it was found that the driver who went to the in-field care center wasn't Benson. It's likely the team will be penalized next week.
I don't understand what this team was thinking. It's not unusual for teams to use substitute drivers during testing if their regular driver is unavailable for part or all of a test. However, it's incredible that the team would put someone behind the wheel without a Nascar liscense, and particularly when they're testing in Charlotte where there's likely quite a few people in the area with the proper qualifications that they could have put behind the wheel. One also has to wonder how much useful feedback and information the team was going to be able to get from someone with no experience racing in Nascar, or for all we know anywhere. We may never know exactly how this came to be, but I'd love to know who this mystery driver was, whether Benson, Bill Davis or anyone else from BDR was aware of what was going on, and whether they've done something like this in the past. What's unfortunate is that even if Benson didn't know that his team was going to use an unliscensed driver, he's probably still going to be penalized for it, which could be costly for a driver hoping to contend for the Championship in the Truck Series.
Posted by silverdsl at May 11, 2007 01:42 PM