The man who tries to clean up NASCAR

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. —  Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the other Nextel Cup stars preparing for Sunday’s Daytona 500 have been upstaged this week by a grim-looking man in a sports jacket who is little known outside the world of stock car racing.

He is Robin Pemberton, 50, a New York native who once was a top crew chief and now is leading NASCAR’s crackdown on cheating.

For three consecutive days this week, Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, stepped before television cameras to announce what cumulatively amounted to the stiffest penalties ever levied against drivers, crew chiefs and team owners for flouting the rules.

Six crew members and officials at three teams have been thrown out of Daytona International Speedway and fined a total of $250,000 for illegally tweaking their cars.

And Jeff Gordon, a three-time winner of the 500, was ordered to start 42nd in the 43-car field Sunday after his Chevrolet was found to be too low in a qualifying heat he won Thursday. Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports team was cleared of cheating, however.

Bending the rules, or outright cheating, has been part of stock car racing since its inception, leading to the adage, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

In the first NASCAR-sanctioned race in the 1949 equivalent of today’s Cup series, Glen Dunnaway’s win was disallowed for a rules infraction and handed to second-place Jim Roper.

But NASCAR, which has soared in popularity in recent years and drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate sponsorship, is adamant about clamping down on teams trying to exploit loopholes.

Its stance firmed before last year’s Daytona 500 -- the sport’s premier race and season-opening event -- when the sanctioning body found that the rear window of Jimmie Johnson’s Hendrick Chevrolet had been doctored. His crew chief, Chad Knaus, was suspended for four races, but Johnson won the race anyway and went on to win the Nextel Cup championship.

When cheating surfaced again in qualifying for this year’s 500, NASCAR pounced. This time, it also took the unprecedented step of docking championship points from drivers before the season had started.

Matt Kenseth of Roush Fenway Racing and Kasey Kahne of Evernham Motorsports each lost 50 points, and Kahne’s teammates, Elliott Sadler and Scott Riggs, lost 25 points apiece. All their crew chiefs also drew suspensions, and all of the violations stemmed from efforts to improve their cars’ aerodynamics.

NASCAR then slammed two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip with a 100-point penalty, and suspended his crew chief and a second team official indefinitely. Waltrip’s team tried to use a fuel additive to boost the power of his Toyota Camry, NASCAR alleged. The crew chief, David Hyder, also was fined a record $100,000.

“We will continue to raise the penalties as time goes forward until we get everybody’s attention,” Pemberton said.

But even NASCAR concedes it can’t stop all the cheating.

“You have a lot of rules that are up for interpretation [and] you’re going to have a couple of people who want to try the system,” NASCAR Chairman Brian France said earlier this week. Cheating has “been going on forever; it will go on forever.”

Several teams said that Pemberton and other NASCAR officials had warned them earlier this year that the penalties would get stiffer.

“NASCAR has to maintain a level playing field and has to appear as if it’s governing properly,” said Earnhardt. “We knew that going in.”

Even Sadler, who drew one of this week’s penalties, said Thursday that he “was glad NASCAR is stepping up to the plate with stiffer penalties.”

He added, “They’re showing everybody they’re not messing around and, as a competitor, I think that’s a good thing.”

Cheating gets more attention than before because NASCAR is doing a better job of catching violators, NASCAR and team members said. And that increased vigilance is embodied in Pemberton, whom colleagues describe as serious-minded and rarely intimidated, but who also has an engaging, dry wit.

Pemberton’s answers at news conferences are typically concise if not always full of detail. When a reporter asked him how long the “indefinite suspensions” of the crew chiefs would last, he replied, “Very long.”

NASCAR hired Pemberton in August 2004, after he had spent 17 years as a crew chief in the Cup series for Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin and Kyle Petty. Pemberton himself was known for pushing the rules.

In 1990, for instance, he was suspended by Roush Racing for 30 days for using an illegal engine part on Martin’s car.

But Pemberton hasn’t yet ejected a driver for breaking the rules, which some have said is the only move that would seriously dent the cheating.

Asked about that prospect, Pemberton said, “We have not entertained the idea of throwing a driver or a complete team out.”

He did not elaborate.

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james.peltz@latimes.com