Subtraction for addition by Waltrip

NASCAR’s cheating scandal ballooned Wednesday when the Nextel Cup team owned by Michael Waltrip, the driver leading Toyota’s entry into American stock car racing, drew a record penalty for doctoring his engine in advance of the season-opening Daytona 500.

After finding that Waltrip’s team had tried to use a performance-enhancing engine additive on his No. 55 Toyota Camry during the first round of qualifying Sunday, NASCAR stripped Waltrip -- a two-time winner of the Daytona 500 -- of 100 championship points.

NASCAR also suspended indefinitely the team’s vice president of competition, Bobby Kennedy, and the crew chief on his car, David Hyder. Hyder also was fined a record $100,000.

The sanctions were handed down a day after NASCAR had levied unprecedented penalties against four other drivers, their crew chiefs and owners for other violations during qualifying.

Altogether, six crew members and officials at three teams, involving five cars, have been ejected from Daytona International Speedway.

The penalties reflect a growing frustration at NASCAR over cheating, despite the sport’s long tradition of teams bending the rules to gain extra speed.

This is the second consecutive year that NASCAR’s flagship race has been marred by cheating.

A year ago, Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, was suspended for four races and fined $25,000 after NASCAR found that Johnson’s Chevrolet had illegal aerodynamic modifications during 500 qualifying. Johnson won the race anyway, then went on to win the season championship.

But the Waltrip affair also amounts to a major embarrassment for Toyota, the first foreign automaker in decades to enter U.S. stock car racing.

After months of preparing for its eagerly awaited debut at the Daytona 500, the Japanese automaker finds itself mired in a cheating scandal.

Waltrip owns one of the three new Toyota teams in the Cup series and is one of seven new Toyota drivers. Toyota builds Waltrip’s engines, but NASCAR said the cheating was done by Waltrip’s team.

“This is not the way you want to enter the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series by any means,” said Jim Aust, president of Toyota Racing Development. “It’s disappointing to him, it’s disappointing to Toyota.”

But he said Toyota had no plans to sever its relationship with Waltrip.

Waltrip said in a statement that the cheating “was an independent act done without consent or authorization from me or any of my executive management team.”

He added, “I respect NASCAR’s rules, its people and the sport’s integrity, which is why I am so sad and embarrassed. I am dedicated to get to the bottom of this.”

The first qualifying round set the two front-row starting spots, and today the drivers will race in twin 150-mile qualifiers to determine the rest of the 43-car lineup.

Waltrip’s team “crossed the line to try to assure themselves a starting spot in the Daytona 500, that’s all there is to it,” said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition.

NASCAR took Waltrip’s tainted car to North Carolina for further inspection but said it’s possible he could still use a backup car to race today and, if he makes the field, in Sunday’s 500.

A somber Pemberton, explaining infractions for a second consecutive day, said that during inspections of Waltrip’s Toyota before qualifying, NASCAR officials noticed an unfamiliar substance in the intake manifold, which supplies the air-fuel mix to the engine’s cylinders.

Pemberton said the substance was discovered when one official reached his hand into the manifold to feel for loose parts.

“When he brought his hand out, there was a substance on there that was unlike anything he had ever seen in the inspection line before,” Pemberton said.

Because NASCAR couldn’t immediately identify the substance, Waltrip was allowed to make his qualifying laps. But then the parts were impounded for more review.

“We’re not going to go into any great detail, but it was a foreign substance that we feel should not have been inside the engine, and we’ll leave it at that,” Pemberton said. He said it wasn’t oil or jet fuel but declined to elaborate.

Some NASCAR fans already were unsettled by the arrival of Toyota in a sport long dominated by Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge, although Dodge is now owned by the German automaker DaimlerChrysler.

Team owners such as Jack Roush, who fields several Fords in the Cup series, also complained that Toyota was upsetting NASCAR’s competitive balance by spending lavishly on people and equipment to quickly become a top-flight competitor.

Waltrip, 43, led Toyota’s defense against the criticism. A familiar, outspoken presence on racing television shows, he became a leading public face for Toyota, arguing that the company had every right to be in NASCAR, largely because it has a major share of the U.S. auto market and several U.S. factories.

Waltrip has won only four Cup races in 675 starts, but two of those victories were the Daytona 500, in 2001 and 2003. He’s also the brother of former NASCAR driver Darrell Waltrip.

This week marked the first time that NASCAR stripped drivers of championship points before the season started.

The violations announced Tuesday involved small aerodynamic adjustments on the Roush Racing Ford driven by Matt Kenseth, and the Dodges driven by Kasey Kahne, Scott Riggs and Elliott Sadler of Evernham Motorsports.

Kenseth and Kahne were docked 50 championship points, and Riggs and Sadler lost 25 each.

In their first responses to the penalties Wednesday, the four drivers and their team owners mostly expressed puzzlement. They said they weren’t trying to cheat and that their alleged infractions were small, compared with previous cheating cases in which the punishments were less severe.

Besides losing the points, Kahne’s crew chief, Kenny Francis, was suspended for four races and fined $50,000. Rodney Childers, crew chief for Riggs, and Josh Brown, crew chief for Sadler, were suspended for two races and fined $25,000.

Kenseth’s crew chief, Robbie Reiser, also drew a four-race suspension and a $50,000 fine.

Although appeals are possible in some cases, the teams said they generally would live with the sanctions. And Kenseth turned the fastest lap during the first practice session Wednesday in his No. 17 Ford Fusion.

“I’m embarrassed for our sponsor and for our team,” said Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion. “I don’t think that Robbie’s ever been known for cheating, I think we’ve always been known as honest, straight shooters.”

Dodge owner Ray Evernham said, “There was not an intent to circumvent the rules,” adding, “The rules maybe have to be written a bit more clearly.”

Roush said, “I personally don’t feel that the punishment fits the crime, certainly not based on the precedence of what they’ve [NASCAR] done in the past.”

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james.peltz@latimes.com

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Begin text of infobox

Michael Waltrip has won two of the last six Daytona 500s:

*--* Year Driver Mph 2001 Michael Waltrip 161.794 2002 Ward Burton 142.971 2003 Michael Waltrip 133.870 2004 Dale Earnhardt Jr. 156.345 2005 Jeff Gordon 135.173 2006 Jimmie Johnson 142.667 Note -- 2003 race was shortened to 409 miles because of rain.

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SCHEDULE

TODAY

* Gatorade qualifying races

60 laps, 150 miles each

11 a.m. PST, Speed

HOW QUALIFYING WORKS

Under the qualifying format, 35 of the 43 starters automatically make it into the race based on last year’s car owner points. Sunday’s time trials locked in the front row: pole-sitter David Gilliland and Ricky Rudd. Two-time Daytona winner Sterling Marlin, Boris Said and Johnny Sauter were the three fastest qualifiers Sunday among those not guaranteed a starting spot, meaning they too are in. For them -- plus the rest of the top 35 and Dale Jarrett, guaranteed a spot as past champion -- only starting positions are in question.

SATURDAY

* Busch Series Orbitz 300

120 laps, 300 miles

10:15 a.m. PST, ESPN2

SUNDAY

* Daytona 500

200 laps, 500 miles

12:15 p.m. PST, Ch. 11

UP NEXT

* Auto Club 500

Feb. 25 at California Speedway

12:30 p.m., Ch. 11