NASCAR confident in pit road timing system: When it
came to pit road, all Sunday's Pocono 400 presented by #NASCAR lacked
was a fleet of cop cars with flashing lights and sirens. All told,
NASCAR handed out 22 pit road speeding penalties, with most offenders
clocked too fast at the exit from pit road. That easily eclipsed the
Sprint Cup Series record of 14 speeding penalties at Kansas in 2006.
#48-Jimmie Johnson was convinced there was something wrong with the
final segment (or timing loop) on pit road. Nothing wrong, says NASCAR,
just different. NASCAR measures pit road speed from the yellow line at
the entrance to pit road to the yellow line at the exit. The full
distance is divided into segments, and drivers must average the speed
limit (plus a tolerance of 4.99 mph) through each segment.
The
2.5-mile race track was repaved this year, and pit road was lengthened.
The number of segments grew from 10 to 11, and the length of the final
segment increased from 56 to 83 feet. NASCAR provides specific
information on the pit road configuration to any team that wants it. The
changes from one year to the next, however, seems to have confounded
more than one driver/crew chief combination, but NASCAR stood by the
accuracy of its measurements.
"Our position is like it's always been
-- yellow line to yellow line," said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice
president of competition. "This track's gone under a lot of
reconfiguration since last year. It's all brand-new pit road, all
brand-new loops. Positions have been changed since last year. Sections
are smaller than they were last year throughout pit road -- and
actually, the last section's a little bit bigger. But the bottom line
is, every week when we go into a race track, there's maps that are
printed back here for the crew chiefs to come get. Some choose to get
'em, some choose to measure their own lines, and some go off of last
year's measurements
