NASCAR Spotter Brett Griffin Suggests Officials Had Extra Pair of Eyes in Catching the Illegal Tape on Kyle Busch’s Car in Richmond

It seems like the delayed penalty for Kyle Busch at Richmond Raceway had NASCAR spotter Brett Griffin channeling his inner Frank Costello. Griffin, who is the spotter for Justin Haley, had his mind clear as to why and how the officials got the wind of the illegal “bright piece of green tape” on the Joe Gibbs Racing driver’s car, a full hour and a half later.

In the recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Griffin suggested NASCAR having some form of external help in turning their attention to the No.18 Camry’s front. “There’s gotta be a rat that saw this from pit road or saw this on television and brought it to NASCAR’s attention, 200 laps later,” Griffin said.

“And obviously, when the official called it in, or however NASCAR was alerted, I don’t NASCAR all of a sudden woke up and went, ‘Oh, what’s that bright piece of green tape on the front of that car? That’s not supposed to be there,'” he continued.

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“So I personally think there’s a rat. And I think somebody raised their hand and went tattle told…I think somebody went and tattletale’d on the (No.) 18 ball and they got in trouble.”

NASCAR’s stance on why the penalty was served so late to Kyle Busch

Brad Moran, the managing director of the Cup Series, recently explained on SiriusXM why NASCAR took so long in notifying Kyle Busch’s team about the penalty.

“We certainly needed to do our due diligence on how it got there, what it really was,” Moran said. “So we went back while the race was going on and did our due diligence to ensure, first of all, that the team placed the tape on the grille area.”

He revealed that they got “notification” around lap 234, but despite that, “it took a bit of time.” 

“It takes a while to pull all of that up and we do our due diligence,” he added.