NASCAR has confirmed that the No. 1 Chevrolet of DEI will be penalized due to failing inspection at Daytona International Speedway. The team was docked 150 driver and owner points, the crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion was fined $100,000 and Manion and the car chief Gary Putnam were suspended for six races.

All because a roof did not fit the templates required by NASCAR.

“It’s NASCAR’s game,” said an upset Truex. “They set the rules and it’s up to us to abide by them.”

NASCAR has declared that they would be strict on the templates of the new car. Obviously they have stuck by their word. They have fined Haas/CNC Racing for a similar case.

“NASCAR has said from Day one that they were going to be strict about this car not fitting the templates,” Truex stated. “We’ll just deal with the penalties and move forward.”

Truex pains the loss of his Manion and Putnam over the next six weeks.

“I hate that we’re going to lose Kevin and Gary. Obviously, they are important to the team and it’ll be weird not having them at the track.

They failed the pre-practice inspection on the Thursday afternoon session. Due to that car not fitting the templates the No. 1 team brought in a new car and it fit the templates perfectly.

“We brought a new car to Daytona and it fit all of the templates at our shop. It doesn’t appear to have been anything intentional on our part but it was still our responsibility. We’ll deal with it and move on.

The vice president of motorsports operations for DEI, John Story, assures that the car fit the templates when it left the shop in Mooresville, NC. He fails to see how the car altered itself on the drive down there.

"We are still trying to understand how the car fit our templates multiple times at the shop, but we respect NASCAR's determination that one of our cars did not exactly conform to their template at the track," Story said.

With the removal of 150 points, there seems to be an extremely minute chance that Truex will be able to contend for the championship this season. That does not cause Truex’s head to descend; he has not lost hope just yet.

“We’ve dug ourselves a hole but we’re not giving up. This team seems to respond the best when its back is against the wall.”