This morning I came across some streaming audio within NASCAR.com’s Garage Pass. The audio was news reporting that Jack Roush is now accusing Toyota of cheating. How Roush made this determination reminds me of Junior Johnson’s allegations against Hendrick Motorsports, of which I talked about in this prior blog.

Jack Roush stated that a proprietary component came up missing from one of his race teams and recovered it from a Toyota team. He is considering filing a law suit, though he has not named the Toyota team involved, which I also find to be curious.

Now any true NASCAR fan with any depth real depth of knowledge about the sport should know by now that NASCAR teams tend to push the limit of the rules and when it goes to far, it becomes cheating. All race teams do it, they just don’t always get caught.

Jack Roush isn’t an innocent man himself. Just a few weeks ago, he was penalized heavily for cheating and his response to it was only verbal outrage over the accusation as he chose not to appeal the penalties, which for me revealed that he did knowingly cheat. Opinions will vary on that, especially for Roush-Fenway Racing fans.

Now I am not dismissing Jack Roush’s accusation at all and nor am I placing any credit into it. Let’s let any investigation or perhaps any court preceedings make that determine, but let’s explore the possibilities of any outcome.

True? – Let’s say for the moment the accusation is true in that Toyota did illegally obtain a proprietary component from a team within Roush-Fenway Motorsports. This would give Toyota another black yet, the first being Waltrip’s Toyota team caught cheating just before last year’s Daytona 500. It could also cost millions to those involved. It would also explain, in part, Toyota’s miraculous competitive improvement over last year.

False? – Now now let’s say that his accusation is false. To put it simply, that would make him just a bitter old man trying to shift the attention about cheating from himself to another. To not yet name the Toyota team involved may just being playing it safe, legally (to avoid a lawsuit himself), but also may just be yet statement without intention of backing it up.

Well we’ll see what comes of this accusation, if anything. This “issue” may die just as quickly as it was formed.