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Check out all of the NASCAR Fanhouse Daytona Speedweeks Coverage.

Casey Mears can now add his name to the list as a candidate for penalties either this week or next from NASCAR due to rules infractions.

The Hendrick Motorsports driver competing in his first race Saturday night as driver of the No. 5 Kelloggs Chevrolet formerly piloted by Kyle Busch finished a strong sixth in the Budweiser Shootout. After his car went through inspection though, the mood changed a little bit for the team.

NASCAR found the No. 5 Chevy to be one-eighth of an inch too low in the rear, adding him to the tentative penalty box now filled by Mears, Kurt Busch & Tony Stewart (bumping and punching during Friday night's Shootout practice), and Robby Gordon (came to Daytona with the wrong Dodge nose on the car).

Mears' new teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the event.

Crew chief Alan Gustafson seemed quite perplexed by the finding.

"I don't think our adjustments were unreasonable, so I'm real surprised," Gustafson said. "It's the first time we ran the car here. We're trying to learn it and figure out what's going to happen. ... We'll collect all the pieces together and figure out what went on."

I don't know that you can really fault Mears' team here, nor would it be appropriate to lump this lapse in with last year's Hendrick penalties and the laundry list of bad deeds committed by Jimmie Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus.

Could one-eighth of an inch make a difference? Possibly. Should it really matter to a driver who finished sixth in a non-points race? I don't think so.

I think and hope that NASCAR will offer some leniency to the No. 5 gang and use it as a chance to understand why a car may have passed pre-race inspection but not post-race. Though the car may be on a full-time schedule in 2008, there is still a steep learning curve involved for every team.

If NASCAR wants to penalize the team for this, it really should be monetary and not a points deduction because the intent -- if any -- wasn't to earn more championship points. In reality, NASCAR should tear apart the car, look at every nut and bolt, and give all of the teams a solid reason for why the infraction happened.

That way, instead of having headlines the day after a race detailing drivers who were penalized, those headlines would be about the race itself.

I could handle that, especially with the highly-entertaining racing we were treated to Saturday night.