Earlier this week, NASCAR officials announced the most severe fine in the sport’s sixty-one year history. No, it was not for Jeremy Mayfield’s violation of the substance abuse policy, however the fine was handed down to Carl Long’s crew chief Charles Swing. The infraction discovered during the All-Star weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway produced a twelve week suspension for Long and Swing, along with a $200,000 fine going to the crew chief.
Their crime? After blowing a head gasket during practice for the Sprint All-Star Showdown, NASCAR examined the engine and found it to be .17 cubic inches larger than the maximum allowed engine size set out in the NASCAR rule book.

HardcoreRaceFans.com caught up with Carl Long Saturday afternoon at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway, offering him an opportunity to present his side of the story.

 “I’ve bought the engine from a very legitimate source that is building lots of engines in the garage area,” Long told HardcoreRaceFans.com. “I had the opportunity, had I known there was something wrong with it, I could have just loaded it in the trailer and told them I didn’t have a back up motor and went home. The fact is I came here to race, I did have a back-up motor and I never thought there was anything wrong with the engine where it came from. I don’t build it myself.”

While he would not reveal where he bought the motor, Long attempted to make it clear he had no previous knowledge of the violation and had no intention of breaking the rules.

“It’s just a situation where things kind of slid through the crack,” Long went on to say. “We’re only talking about .17 of a cubic inch, which is like a Chiclets in twenty pieces. I never came here with any intention to do anything but race.”

As a business owner, Long realized when he entered the event that last place paid $26,900. While he claimed he had all intentions of running the full race, he clearly took the money he could earn into account.

“If I had a bad day, I went home with $26,900,” Long explained. “I spent $16,000 to get here knowing I was getting a check for close to twenty-seven (thousand dollars). They added some spots to the field and I got five (thousand) because I was the first guy to fall out. So, already I took a $21,000 hit. Then that motor blew up. Some guys on my team, in their haste to put the new motor in – we have a return oil filter in line and it catches a lot of debris – they had to clean it out and they put the filter back in backwards and I blew the second motor up during the race. So, I lost two engines, I bumped into the back of my buddy David Starr during one of the first crashes and wrecked my car.”

Obviously not the kind of outing he was looking for, Long could have never imagined what was to come next.

When he learned of the penalty issued by NASCAR, Long told HardcoreRaceFans.com he felt as if, “somebody at NASCAR had bumped their head, that was my initial thought.”

The penalty handed down to the small independently funded team was staggering to say the least. On top of the twelve race suspension for both driver and crew chief, the team lost 200 driver points and 200 owner points. What shocked most in the garage was the unprecedented $200,000 fine issued to Swing – a NASCAR record.

 “All my life I have wanted to set records in NASCAR, just not this one,” said Long. He went on to say that if the crew chief is unable to pay the fine, the responsibility falls on the owner – in this case he and his wife.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” Long admitted. “My race team and my personal income all together, we don’t generate over $100,000 a year with everything that comes in. So basically, you are fining me twice what my annual income is. Go take one of the other teams that gets a $20 million sponsor and fine them $40 million, same deal.”

Trying to put things in perspective and to help illustrate his point better, Long offered this analogy to our readers.

“Imagine you’re running 55mph in a car with a speedometer is off by two miles per hour. You get pulled over for running 57 in a 55. You’ve never been pulled, you’ve never had any problems before, you don’t think the policeman is going to be a problem, he might even let you go – well that didn’t happen. Instead of just getting a normal speeding violation or a ticket, I got the electric chair.

“Basically, if I can’t pay the fine I’ll never get a NASCAR license,” Long added. “I won’t even be able to go run a late model race at Hickory (Motor Speedway), I won’t have a NASCAR license. I can’t do my normal job to feed my family working for the Front Row Motorsports team or any team, because I can’t come to the track. Jobs in racing right now are real scarce – I don’t know if you have seen how many unemployed people there are in Charlotte looking for racing jobs.

“Everybody here has this thing, ‘You’re living the dream, you’re working in NASCAR.’ This dream has become the worse nightmare. I could have done a lot of things in my life. I’ve quit a lot of good jobs to keep racing and now at 41 years old, all my life savings are tied up in racing. I live month-to-month to pay my house payments.

“The message is little guy go home and go away from my sport, leave it alone, not even NASCAR late model at Hickory.”

For Long, it is clear he feels his livelihood is in serious danger of going away. A man who has devoted his life to racing, Long now faces an uncertain future in which he has very little control. His fates now lies in the hands of the appeal commission, who he hopes is understanding of his situation.

 “Dover might be my last race ever in a NASCAR vehicle next week,” Long said with a clearly disappointed look on his face. “I’d love to get in a [Nationwide] car or a truck and go out there and show people I am here because I deserve to be here, not because of whatever politics and so forth.”

What has happened to Carl Long is truly a shame. A race who truly loves to race, Long has never been a part of the start-and-park crowd and is a true independent running on a shoestring budget. Now, thanks to this devastating blow handed down by NASCAR, the 41-year-old career and life have been ruined over .17 cubic inches.

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