cross-posted at skippy as well as a literal cornucopia of other community blogs.

nascar champ michael waltrip has apologized for having a substance resembling jet fuel in his vehicle. the latimes:

a chastened michael waltrip apologized thursday for cheating violations by his nextel cup team that drew a record penalty from nascar and embarrassed his carmaker, toyota, preparing for its first daytona 500.

but waltrip nonetheless qualified for sunday’s race after he was allowed to drive a backup car in a qualifying heat thursday…

waltrip’s main car was confiscated after nascar officials ruled that his team had tried to use a performance-enhancing engine additive on the no. 55 toyota camry during the first round of qualifying sunday.

–more after the jump–
tho waltrip’s team seems to think the apology will put the scandal to rest, his car has gone into rehab.

in a related story, jeff gordon was penalized when his car failed inspection, tho everyone has agreed to agree that it was an unintentional violation. autoweek via autoblog:

after jeff gordon won thursday’s second qualifying race in daytona, his car failed a post-race inspection for riding too low. while nascar officials are not accusing gordon or his team of cheating, it will cost him. instead of starting saturday’s race in 4th position, gordon will fight his way through 41 other cars if he wants to take the lead.

autoweek quotes nascar vice-president of competition robin pemberton as saying, “the bolt on the shock fastener and the shock bracket itself were misaligned. it was unintentional because it would have been unsafe to intentionally build it like that. give or take, it was about an inch too low. my experience through the years tells me this was unintentional. it would have taken different parts and pieces to do it intentionally.”

it is rather like hearing that hank aaron used steroids…by accident.