NASCAR met with Chad Knaus Friday morning at Martinsville and then released the following statement:

“We had the opportunity to visit with Chad and Jimmie this morning in Martinsville. As the sport’s governing body we were doing our due diligence to look into this and gain some insight into the comments Chad made before the race at Talladega.

What comments were said:

Johnson’s in-car camera was live on NASCAR.com’s RaceBuddy application, the chat was broadcast to anyone watching the feed at the time.

“If we win this race, you have to crack the back of the car,”
Knaus could be heard telling Johnson on the recording. “Got it?”

 “Really?” Johnson replied, sounding surprised.

 “Yes,” Knaus said. “Got it? You don’t have to have to hit it hard,
you don’t have to destroy it. But you’ve gotta do a donut and you’ve
gotta hit the back end, or somebody’s gotta hit you
in the ass-end or something. OK?”

We have a responsibility to the rest of the garage area to ensure that everyone is competing on a level playing field with the inspection processes we have in place. The 48 organization knows that from this occurrence that their car is likely to be a regular customer at the R&D Center for post race inspection the balance of this season.”