Driving off in a vehicle without a gas tank, with extra fuel stashed inside the frame. Showing up with a racecar scaled down to a fraction of its normal size. Aluminum bumpers, nitrous oxide canisters and a spoiler coming off the roof. Filling the roll bar with sand to make inspection weight, and then letting it all run out. Placing a basketball in the fuel cell that could be inflated when capacity was checked, and deflated for the race.

They're all tactics attributed to the late, great Henry "Smokey" Yunick, a NASCAR engine builder, car owner, crew chief and loophole-finder extraordinaire. During the 1950s and 60s, the man in his trademark white coveralls and cowboy hat became an iconoclastic figure through innovation that didn't always sit well with the sanctioning body. He was the impetus for many of the technical rules in place today, and an inspiration to modern crew chiefs who push the sport's gray areas to their limits.

Of course, these days, the sport is pushing back. NASCAR has cranked up its penalties, issuing $100,000 fines and six-week suspensions to any crew chief caught fiddling with the Car of Tomorrow, a vehicle with a low tolerance for the kind of creativity that makes a crew chief famous, infamous or sometimes both at once. Tony Eury Jr., crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., just finished such a mandatory leave period. Chad Knaus and Steve Letarte, respective crew chiefs for Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, are in the midst of similar vacations.

Their offenses -- illegally mounting a rear-wing bracket or pulling out a fender -- seem tame when compared to what went on in Yunick's day. But back then, the rule book was much smaller. The tolerances were much wider. And brilliant mechanical minds like Yunick, who called his Daytona Beach shop the Best Damn Garage, had more room to work. That is, until NASCAR decided otherwise.

"He didn't really bend the rules," said Marvin Panch, who won the 1961 Daytona 500 in a Yunick car. "It's just, if it wasn't in the rule book, he'd take advantage of it. That's about what it amounted to."

Yunick died of leukemia in 2001, but his legend will live as long as men change spark plugs and oil. He flew bombers in World War II, hunted for gold in South America, raced Indy cars as well as stockers and had nine U.S. patents to his name. But in motorsports, he's become most closely associated with one unsavory word -- cheating -- that's reared its head again and again in a season that's already seen seven Nextel Cup crew chiefs suspended for rule violations. (Continued)