Some final thoughts before the Atlanta race

The ways NASCAR teams cheat are impressive. Carl Edwards got caught with a missing lid on his car's oil reservoir after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It's just another in a long list of cheats who have won races in the history of NASCAR.
Jack Roush, the owner of Edwards' Cup team, opened some old wounds, bringing up one of the times Jeff Gordon was penalized for failing a post-race inspection. Geoff Smith, the president of Roush Fenway Racing, brought up the rocket fuel that was found in Michael Waltrip's new Toyota stock cars at last year's Daytona 500.
Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson have been caught with unapproved modifications to their cars during inspections before and after races. There are more, too many to list even on the world wide web.
Cheating is nothing new and part of the charm of NASCAR. Crew chiefs and teams get the rules and do their best to work within the parameters of those rules. They have no qualms about testing the boundaries of those rules either.
Greg Biffle, one of Edwards' teammates at Roush Fenway Racing, tried to explain how a lid could fall off an oil reservoir.
"We used to have quarter turn fasteners that hold the lid on and sometimes those would come loose," said Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Ford for Roush Fenway Racing. "In these cars we’ve had a severe vibration problem with the new car, which is mind blowing why we’ve had a vibration problem. You’ve heard us talk about it in Daytona. Most of the tests, they’ve worked on it. At Vegas, my leg was going to sleep. When we tested in Vegas, my lower calf hurt because the car was vibrating so bad. So, we’ve worked extremely hard on our transmissions, the drive shafts and rear gears to find this vibration and try to eliminate it. They think that’s what caused the lid to come off Carl’s car was the vibration."
Whatever. Elliott Sadler said that however the crew figured out to get the lid to come off was genius, almost sounded like he was upset his team didn't figure it out first.
One thing that is certain, all cheating aside, is that the Roush cars have been fast in the first three races of the year. Even David Ragan, the second-year driver of the No. 6 Ford for Roush, finished seventh at Vegas. And Travis Kavpil, whose getting his engines through a joint effort from Roush and his Yates Racing team, was eighth at Vegas.
“The greatest thing is if we weren’t there, Matt Kenseth probably would have won the race," said Edwards, driver of the No. 99 Ford for Roush Fenway Racing. "If Matt wasn’t there, Greg might have won the race. We’ve got the greatest cars out there in these Ford Fusions. We’re doing really well. We’re doing everything right."
Well, almost everything. Passing post-race inspections should be a priority for Edwards' team, or any team, from here on out. Mainly because it looks like NASCAR is going to take away precious bonus points for teams in the Chase if they fail post-race inspections.
"Obviously, these mistakes are not good that we made on pit road and that we made with that panel, but that’s what I’m excited about," Edwards said. "We’re three races in and we’ve got two wins and that’s the best start to any season that I’ve ever had in my life, so I feel like we’ve got a whole bunch to look forward to. I’m real excited about it.”