NASCAR: Stewart fine was correct, says Sabates

Chip Ganassi Racing partner Felix Sabates believes that NASCAR was right to fine Tony Stewart (above) for the remarks he made last week about the series' lug nut policy, even if he agreed with Stewart's sentiments.

Stewart incurred the fine after questioning the series' commitment to safety with regard to what he considered to be lax enforcement of the rule, which requires teams to fasten all five lug nuts on each wheel. The Sprint Cup Drivers' Council subsequently announced that it would pay Stewart's fine in a show of solidarity, and NASCAR has since clarified how the rule will be enforced in future.

Sabates said that Stewart's point was valid, but that he should have raised his concerns privately instead of through the media.

"They have should penalized him $35,000 and the reason for that is, we all have to have a united front," he said. "You can't have somebody shooting their mouth about this sport because it hurts with the sponsors.

"You have one of the premier drivers ... well he used to be anyway, and now he's an old guy. He's a nice guy and I love him to death, but Tony is not going to win anything. He's old. And I'm old. I can't do what I used to be able to do so it got nothing to do with anything other than age. He's been hurt.

"Anyway, he should have come back and not said anything. He should have gone to NASCAR and said to NASCAR, 'hey, I disagree'. And I agree with him on that. Tony is right. It's a safety issue. [But] he should have handled it a different way."

Sabates, who attended just his second race of the season at Richmond last weekend due to his ongoing recovery from health problems, also admitted that Ganassi has not yet provided drivers Kyle Larson (left) and Jamie McMurray with the equipment they need to be a regular threat at the front of the pack. McMurray has yet to finish higher than 13th in the points while running under the CGR banner, while Larson's two seasons have left him 17th and 19th. Neither driver has achieved a win under the team's current iteration.

"I think that we fell behind engineering-wise," Sabates said. "We were really good on the mile-and-a-half tracks a few years ago. Larson was running up front every week and you don't go from running good to running bad overnight unless you did something wrong.

"Larson didn't become a worse driver. He became a better driver. A racecar is very simple. You got a car, you got four tires and you got a driver and somebody has to put the cars together and make the calls to run that car. If that person fails a little bit, I don't care how good of a driver you have."