By alley - Sep 21, 2016, 6:09 PM ET

NASCAR: More changes to post-race penalty system

A special circumstance warranted a special response from NASCAR as the sanctioning body announced on Wednesday yet another change to its post-race technical inspection procedure.

NASCAR has increased the tolerance for post-race measurements and lug nuts, eliminating all lower-tier penalties and will only issue a penalty if it warrants a suspension and the revocation of win bonuses such as an automatic advancement during the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Under the pre-existing rules, it was possible that despite similar infractions, only Johnson would get penalized simply because he didn't win the race. Truex would have received the same points-deducting penalty as Johnson but it wouldn't have mattered because a victory meant an automatic berth into the next round.

In short, NASCAR Vice President of Racing Development Steve O'Donnell said the league recognized and corrected a problem pertaining to fairness before any real damage could be done.

"If we applied those penalties, the post-race penalty really would not treat each competitor fairly," O'Donnell said during a Wednesday teleconference with the media. "We also saw this as a potential situation that we could see repeating itself for the next nine races of the Chase going forward. So we made the decision coming out of Chicago not to penalize (Truex) or (Johnson) for the post-race infractions we saw in Chicago, which we agree the industry would agree were minor in nature."

Those sentiments were shared by Scott Miller, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition.

"This one is on us," Miller said. "That's something that is not fair. We are doing our best to rectify that."

The only exception to that former rule, unveiled last week, was if NASCAR deemed the infraction excessive, egregious or appearing intentional. That wasn't the case for either team on Sunday but only Johnson would have suffered from a points penalty, given that he would have had only two races to win or earn enough points to advance into the second round of the playoffs.

Also in the name of fairness, NASCAR will now require all playoff teams to go through the LIS station after every event. Only nine of the 16 went through inspection after the race on Sunday at Chicagoland.