By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

MARTINSVILLE, Va. (March 28, 2008) — According to Jack Roush, “It’s
lawyer time.”

Roush appeared in the Martinsville Speedway media center Friday to
discuss what he termed the theft of a proprietary Roush Fenway Racing
sway bar by a Toyota team, identified Friday afternoon on the website
SceneDaily.com as Michael Waltrip Racing. The incident allegedly took
place at the second race at Dover International Speedway last September.

Roush said the part, which was developed by his organization’s
engineers, was recovered recently during a clandestine meeting between
managers from Roush Fenway and the Toyota team. The proprietary,
serial-numbered sway bar was stolen from an open compartment beneath one
of the Roush Fenway toolboxes on pit road, Roush alleges.

Team owner Michael Waltrip told SceneDaily’s Bob Pockrass that MWR
acquired the sway bar by mistake, that the part “wound up in our
possession.”

Roush initially took the issue to NASCAR but says that meetings with the
sanctioning body have yet to produce the results he seeks. Lawyers for
the team currently are weighing options that may include filing for an
injunction in court against the Toyota team’s use of the technology.

“I’ve had three discussions with NASCAR people, not all the same person,
as I attempted to work my way through this with an appropriate sanction,
and relief could be given to me for the theft that occurred,” Roush
said. “I still don’t have a satisfactory resolution to that. I’m not
going to say what the status of those discussions are, but we’ve had
numerous conversations, and I took it there first.”

NASCAR, however, views it more as an issue between the teams.

“At the core of NASCAR’s inspection process is the openness of how we do
things in the garage area,” NASCAR spokesperson Kerry Tharp said.
“That’s been our style for years and will continue to be. It’s one of
the elements of our sport that makes it unique. This particular matter
was brought to our attention a while back, and we believe it’s something
that the teams involved need to work out among themselves.”

That point of view is shared by Lee White, senior vice president and
general manager of Toyota Racing Development U.S.A.

“Relative to the ’sway bar issue’ that Jack Roush referenced this
morning, from our perspective this is an issue that appears to be
between two race teams and does not involve a manufacturer,” White said
in a statement released Friday afternoon.

Roush said he learned about the alleged theft when an employee of the
Toyota team reportedly contacted a manufacturer about duplicating the
sway bar. At that point, Roush wanted to lower the boom on the rival
team.

“I found out about it and I wanted to go supersonic,” Roush said. “We’re
going up (there). We’re going to get a search warrant. We’re going to
get the bar. It’s intellectual espionage that’s going on here. They’ve
stolen the part. They’ve got access to it. They’ve had an opportunity to
see what it does, see what its efficiency for weight and for function
are, and we’ve been damaged. We’ve been harmed by this theft.

“So before I get things organized to tell people what to do about this,
one of my managers calls a manager for that team and says, ‘You know,
we’ve got information and confirmation that somebody from your team has
stolen the bar and that it’s in your possession.’ I heard that had been
done and I said, ‘That was stupid. That thing will wind up in the river
some place. It’ll be gone. We’ve missed our chance to get our arms
around this thing.’

“But we got the call back and the manager said, ‘I had no knowledge of
that,’ and I believed that was true. He went back and he found that they
had the bar and they chose to tell us that they had the bar. Again,
without my knowledge — there are 300-400 people that work for Roush
Fenway that do things everyday that I would like to have my arms around,
but I can’t do that, try as I might — so a clandestine meeting was
arranged at 6 o’clock in the morning to return the bar, one manager to
the other. I got the bar back.

“It’s been sandblasted. It’s got its appearance changed, but it’s still
got the serial number on it, and it’s got all the proprietary
considerations that it had. It hasn’t been re-machined. It hasn’t been
changed in shape. It hasn’t been welded on. They didn’t grind the
numbers off. It’s my bar. I’ve got it back.”

Now Roush Fenway Racing and its lawyers must decide what the
organization is going to do about it.

Roush first alluded to the alleged theft in an interview with ESPN The
Magazine conducted the weekend of the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor
Speedway. Roush had taken offense at published comments made by White,
which he construed as indicating he was complicit in the oil tank cover
violation discovered in Carl Edwards’ winning car at Las Vegas a week
earlier.

“He was mad at me, maybe deservedly so, and I’ve apologized,” White said
Friday afternoon during qualifying. “I said something that wasn’t my
place to say — a month ago. The first I heard of this (sway bar issue)
was yesterday. We’re not going to turn this into a he-said, she-said
(between) me and Jack. Baloney. That’s not happening.”

Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon, who had no axe to grind in the
sway bar affair, said the incident was the talk of the garage on Friday.