On Tuesday’s edition of the Dale Jr. Download, CARS Tour co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. addressed the Tuesday disqualification of Treten Lapcevich, who had initially been scored as the winner of Saturday night’s Window World 125 at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
“There’s been a bit of a controversy since the win,” Earnhardt explained.
While Earnhardt holds the 20-year-old Lapcevich in high regard, same with the Chad Bryant Racing team, he says that the team was unfortunately found to have an illegal rear-end housing in the No. 77 machine on Saturday night.
“Treyten [Lapcevich] driving for Chad Bryant, they’ve been fast. Chad’s cars are great. We’re thrilled that Chad is a part of the series and he’s put some awesome cars out on the race track for a lot of really cool race car drivers. Treyten comes from Canada, 20 years old. He was the 2023 [NASCAR Canada] Series champion. Really cool we would have someone like that coming into our series. Well, he’s been running well, and he finally appeared to have won the race this past weekend. But it was discovered that he had a nine-inch Ford rear-end housing, and those are not legal. It’s in the rulebook. It clearly states that you have to run a quick change rear-end housing and it’s not debatable. It’s pretty much black and white right there.”
Earnhardt says in years past, the CARS Tour Rulebook has allowed multiple rear-end housing combinations, but when he and the new ownership group took over, they immediately began changing the wording in the rulebook in numerous areas in an effort to streamline the series and reducing costs for teams, and alleviate headaches overall for everyone involved. The rear-end housings were one of the rules addressed.
“There’s a lot of things changing in the series trying to make the series streamlined and better. And this particular rule is new this year,” Earnhardt stated. “And I think that Chad Bryant and his team weren’t trying to obviously come in and cheat. They read this rule or interpreted this rule a certain way. And when you see it in the rulebook, it’s pretty clear what you’re expected to do. Knowing Chad and his team, I don’t think that they came in going, ‘Oh, we’re going to sneak this under the radar and nobody is going to know,’ and so, I don’t want to pile on too much. Because they’re a valuable asset to this series. All of our teams are. And so, Treyten is a great little race car driver, and the series, the CARS Tour Series is I hope just a part of his journey into the NASCAR top three series.”
Earnhardt defended CARS Tour officials’ decision to strip the win from Lapcevich. It’s all about ranking the integrity of the series above all else.
“We feel like unfortunately, we have to make an adjustment to the finishing order and Corey Heim will be elevated into first place,” Earnhardt said. “And so, as frustrating as that is, it’s not what we want happening as a series, but we feel like for the integrity of the series going forward, we have to make this choice because this was an obvious advantage to run this part. All of our other owners, all of our other engine builders, everybody involved in the series would want us to withhold the integrity of the series even if the fear of what kind of feedback or criticism you may get from it. But we feel like this is the best decision for us to make.”
While Earnhardt and CARS Tour officials seem to feel the ruling is cut and dry, Lapcevich and his team have indicated that is not the case.
“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,” Lapcevich stated in a post on X.
The driver and his Chad Bryant Racing team have indicated that they will take their fight on the matter as far as they can, so, it looks like this infraction will be heading to appeals, where everyone will have their chance to be heard.
