Riggs tries to defend team for cheating

Scott Riggs believes NASCAR blew the call. Riggs said the penalties levied against Haas-CNC Motorsports for alterations to its new car were too steep. The penalties crippled Riggs' No. 66 Chevrolet in the points standings and put him in serious danger of falling outside the top 35 and losing his guaranteed spot in the field.

Riggs said the severe penalties – which included suspensions, fines and docked points – simply "don't fit the crime."

"If it was something we had done one time and we're trying to get by with something and it was affecting the car, I'd say yeah, we were doing something wrong," Riggs said on Saturday. "But it was something that had been on the car all year that NASCAR had seen. All of a sudden, somebody else from another team saw it, didn't like it. And since the other team didn't like it, NASCAR decided it didn't like it."

Crew chiefs Robert "Bootie" Barker and Dave Skog and car chiefs Derick Jennings and Thomas Harris started suspensions for tampering with their Chevrolets' rear wings last weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway. The team personnel were suspended for six weeks for violating rules with the wing mounting locations. The crew chiefs also were fined $100,000, while the drivers and teams were penalized 150 points.

NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said there could be a slim possibility that the infractions had been missed in previous inspections, but that, "it doesn't mean it was right."

"Once we found it, we reacted swiftly and severely," he said. AOL Sports