This week NASCAR dished out stiff penalties to Haas CNC Racing after it was discovered both the No. 66 and No. 70 crews had tampered with the upper bracket on the car's rear wing. Crew chiefs Bootie Barker (No. 66) and Dave Skog (No. 70) have been suspended six weeks, each was fined $100,000 and the team was docked 150 points in both the owner and driver standings.

The Haas CNC team is not the first to tamper with the new car and definitely not the first to be penalized for doing so. Earlier in the year, Carl Edwards was penalized 100 points and lost crew chief Bob Osborne for six weeks following the team's win at Las Vegas.

NASCAR bumped the penalties up this week to 150 points, taking an additional fifty points away from each team. Hoping to deter teams from tampering with this new car, NASCAR has stepped up the penalties once again ? and it definitely has the garage talking.

"The point is that if there's something illegal on the cars," Edwards said of the last week's infraction, "those are huge, huge penalties - NASCAR is making sure with these penalties - and points in particular - that people are doing everything they can to not break these rules. I know we are. We are hyper-sensitive to anything that could be outside of the box on rules and that's because of those penalties everyone is paying attention to it and we all understand the weight of those penalties for sure."

Edwards' Roush Fenway Racing teammate stated, "I think NASCAR is continuing to send the message that we don't want you messing with these cars. They fit the template and they're supposed to fit the template and that's a cut-and-dry rule. There's no gray area with these cars."

"I think NASCAR has shown a lot of consistency in how they are dolling out these penalties," Richard Childress Racing's Jeff Burton explained. "They have shown the willingness, and of course have the ability to stiffen penalties, especially when it's not a question of something that could have been a mistake."

Teams will continue to push the limit all the way to the edge when it comes to making adjustments to this new car. In response, it is clear NASCAR will do what it takes to prevent teams from crossing that threshold and breaking the rules. The stiff penalties handed out this week are proof of that.