Conspiracy ... could someone use induction heating to destroy a metal part on a race car?

May be...

and that would accomplish what

Absolutely. Think of it like this-what if those parts that failed were copycat counterfeit parts, not correctly heat treated? The USA has a major problem with these type of parts being shipped in from overseas. Not naming any country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_-Iv9Fdd...

Heating the part would discolor it. It could have been manufactured wrong, could have missed the heat treating process during manufacturing.

The part could have failed because it was defective, installed incorrectly or the car setup could have overstressed it. Gibbs knows exactly why it failed by now. Look for them to say it was a faulty part rather than something they did wrong.

The car wasn't right before it broke though, and it wasn't right after it was replaced so I assume the real problem was elsewhere.

The front end wasn't level during the pace laps, it was low on the left front. There was a problem with the way the car was set up IMO.

Jeff Gordon would.

Usually heating metal makes it stronger. Heat treating.
It depends on what kind of metal it is. I'm going to say "no" unless you want to be more specific and use additional details so you can describe which "part" you conspiracy consists of

????????????????????

yes it 100% possible to do that but if your letting another team that close to your car you deserve it