CARS Tour DQs Treyten Lapcevich, Chad Bryant Racing from Wilkesboro win

Three days following the Window World 125, CARS Tour has disqualified North Wilkesboro Speedway winner Treyten Lapcevich and the Chad Bryant Racing No. 77 for an infraction first discovered on Saturday night.

Upon further investigation with CARS Tour technical officials and the team’s owner, Chad Bryant, it has been verified that the unapproved part was indeed on the car throughout the event. Lapcevich’s team, Chad Bryant Racing, admitted to misinterpreting the rule as it is printed and CARS Tour management accepted that explanation.
-CARS Tour

The part in question is the team using a 9″ Ford rear end housing as opposed to a quick change.

As a result, Corey Heim of Lee Pulliam Performance has been declared the winner in the official rundown.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who co-owns the series alongside Kevin Harvick, Justin Marks and Jeff Burton, addressed the topic on Tuesday during his Dale Jr Download podcast.

“There’s been a bit of a controversy since the race,” Earnhardt said. “Treyten, driving for Chad Bryant, they’ve been fast and we’re thrilled that Chad is part of the series. He’s put out some awesome cars for a lot of really cool drivers over the years. …

“Treyten has been running well and he finally appeared to have won the race this past weekend but it was discovered that he had a nine Ford rear end housing and those are not legal. It’s in the rule book and it clearly says you have to run a quick change rear end housing. It’s not debatable. It’s black and white.

“Unfortunately, our series, the CARS Tour has been around a long time and they’ve had a lot of the same group handling technical inspection over the years and they’ve ran under a similar structured rule book for a long time.

“So over the last year and a half, since we bought the series, we’ve changed a lot of the languages in the rule book and we’ve made it where certain things weren’t clear, very clear.

“We’ve done some things to eliminate or alleviate hassle or unnecessary hassle, not just in the rule book but all other protocols — parking, practice days — there is a lot of things changing in the series to try to make it streamlined and better.

“This particular rule is new this year. I think Chad Bryant and his team were not trying to come in and cheat. They read this rule or interpreted this rule a certain way. When you see it in the rule book, it’s pretty clear what you’re expected to do.

“Knowing Chad and his team, I don’t think they were trying to sneak it in under the radar and I don’t want to pile on too much because they are a valuable asset to the series … all our teams are.

“Treyten is a great little race car driver and I hope our CARS Tour series is a great part of his journey into the NASCAR Top 3 series. It’s unfortunate that we’ve had some penalties and other things that are happening but its part of streamlining the series to make it better. … As unfortunate as it is, we feel like for the integrity of the series moving forward, we have to make this choice because it was an obvious advantage to run this part.

“All of our other (teams) would want us to withhold the integrity of the series, even at the fear of what kind of criticism you might get from it. But we feel like that was the best decision we had to make.”

Short Track Scene received the following statement over the phone from Chad Bryant on Tuesday afternoon:

“We believe in the process and the ownership and management group to make the right decisions going forward and to fix the broken system,” Bryant said. “CBR looks to be an integral part of the process in the future.

“It was a miscommunication between series officials and the team. I’m disappointed with CARS Tour’s decision and in the coming days, we do plan to file appeal. In my 30 years of motorsports, Chad Bryant as an employee or an entity has never been disqualified from any motorsports event ever.

“Thank you to EVIRUM and Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship for all the support and to all our loyal fans and our employees for all their hard work, effort and the drive to win each and every week. Going forward, we plan to implement procedures so that such events never happen again. There will be many more facts released in the coming days. The truth will be known. We hope the racing community embraces our position.

“We also hope the racing community embraces the CARS Tour and the ownership group to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We feel like it was a matter of a broken process and system and we hope to be an instrumental partner in fixing the problem.”

Lapcevich was a little stronger in his statement:

“The news today has obviously come as a shock and surprise which we never would have expected,” he said. “I will say, we plan to fight this one out until the end.

“On Saturday, the tech director shook our hands and congratulated us, and on Monday we received a call stating the potential of our disqualification due to something another competitor raised a concern about. I’m at the shop every single day working alongside these guys, and I know what has gone into this. The press release reads as though we misinterpreted the rules, but I will assure everyone that that is a lie.”

Additionally, Nelson Motorsports’ Connor Hall was penalized one lap after the race for using a tire that was not impounded for the event as described in the Penalties Section of the rule book.

Hall was involved in the massive Lap 8 crash but was able to get his car repaired and survived to the end. Hall is scored 17th officially.