GEARING UP

1 Roush Fenway Racing blamed a faulty bolt for the rules infraction that prompted NASCAR to penalize its Sprint Cup driver Carl Edwards and his team.

Edwards was docked 100 championship points, and crew chief Bob Osborne was suspended for six races, after inspectors found the lid was off of the oil tank in Edwards’ No. 99 Ford. That could have provided an aerodynamic advantage.

The discovery came after Edwards won last Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, his second consecutive victory. But the penalty knocked him from the points lead to seventh.

Roush Fenway President Geoff Smith said “the bolt holding the lid in place failed in its purpose, as a result of vibration harmonics generated by the car and the race track during the race.”

The team is mulling whether “the circumstances justify submitting to the unpleasantness of the appeal process,” but in the meantime Osborne will start serving his penalty, Smith said in a statement.

Osborne will be replaced at Sunday’s Cup race in Atlanta by the team’s chief engineer, Chris Andrews, and its general manager, Robbie Reiser.

2 More Cup drivers are calling for “soft walls” throughout every track on the NASCAR Cup series after three of its leading drivers -- Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch -- suffered hard crashes in the Las Vegas race.

None was injured but all three were shaken by the collisions, especially Gordon, who hit a section of the inside wall at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that does not yet have a so-called SAFER barrier, or soft wall.

“I was sore on Monday, but I’m feeling better each day,” said Gordon, a four-time Cup champion. Immediately after the wreck, he said, “I looked down and saw where the transmission was, but it was no longer there.”

3 A.J. Allmendinger, a former open-wheel racer who joined one of Red Bull’s Cup teams in NASCAR, will temporarily be replaced by Mike Skinner, a former Cup driver who now races full-time in NASCAR’s truck series.

Allmendinger has failed to qualify for the first three Cup races this year, and Skinner will attempt to finally qualify the No. 84 Toyota for Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, I’m a racer and I want to be racing,” said Allmendinger, a Los Gatos native. “But I get the big picture here and obviously we need to improve our program.”

4 Former open-wheel champion Paul Tracy, 39, is apparently one of the first victims of the recently announced merger of the Indy Racing League and the Champ Car World Series.

Tracy’s team, Forsythe Championship Racing, said it would not be among the Champ Car teams moving to the IRL but instead would cease operations because it “has been unable to secure the necessary sponsorship.”

Forsythe, whose owner Gerald Forsythe also was a co-owner of Champ Car, said it does plan to enter the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach -- the final Champ Car race -- on April 20, but it did not name drivers for the event.

Tracy, the series champion in 2003 and a four-time winner at Long Beach, hopes to find a ride elsewhere. “I want to be part of the new series,” he told the Associated Press.

5 The 50th annual “March Meet,” a three-day festival centered on nostalgic drag racing, starts today at Auto Club Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield.

Jim Aust, who helped spearhead Toyota’s entry into NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series last year, is retiring June 30. Aust is chief executive of Torrance-based Toyota Racing Development.

In local racing Saturday, USAC/CRA sprint cars head the multi-race program at Perris Auto Speedway, and Ventura Raceway opens its season with sprint and modified cars.