Before the season began, the Next Gen era began, NASCAR introduced a new tier of penalties for teams who violate any rules. This new system was designed to intimidate teams from even thinking of tampering with any rules because should they be found guilty, they’d be heavily, brutally penalized. Yesterday, we saw the first example of the new penalties, the culprit being Brad Keselowski.

NASCAR deemed Keselowski and his No.6 RFK Mustang in violation of rules. Subsequently, the former Penske driver found himself short of 100 driver points, 100 driver points, and 10 playoff points.

His crew chief was also suspended for the next four races along with a fine of $100,000.

In their statement, NASCAR only mentioned the reason as, “for modifying a single source supplied part.” Now which part that was, we didn’t know.

However, journalist Bob Pockrass recently cleared this a little bit. “From everything I’ve been told by people who should know and confirmed by people who should know, the Keselowski violation has to do with a rear body panel modification,” he tweeted.

Brad Keselowski was looking forward to the race in COTA

In an interview leading up to the weekend in Austin, Brad Keselowski expressed his excitement for the first road course race of the season. “Going to our first road course race is for one exciting, and two a chance to see what our guys at RFK have put together for this type of racing,” he said.

“Road course racing is different, challenging and fun if you can make it work, so we’ll see what we have this weekend in our Wyndham Rewards machine.”

No matter how you look at it, this is a crushing penalty for Keselowski and his team. But then again, this is what the new system was implemented for, to discourage any and all types of illegal modifications.

Sadly for Brad Keselowski, he has become the first example of this system.

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