Nothing wrong with timing segments on Pocono pit road

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

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.

Jimmie Johnson’s recent surge was derailed — at least to some extent — by two speeding penalties, both on exit. Johnson lost a lap, got it back and eventually finished fourth behind winner Joey Logano. Though he salvaged a top-five, Johnson was convinced there was something wrong with the final segment (or timing loop) on pit road.

Nothing wrong, says NASCAR, just different.

“There is a segment down there where something is just not like it normally is,” Johnson said after the race. “I got nailed twice, and I know a lot of other guys got nailed. There’s something wrong with the timing loop, and the orange line (at the end of pit road) and the way the drivers interact with that.

“Normally, when we hit the orange line (which NASCAR refers to as yellow), we go, and I did that the first time we got nailed. The second time, I waited until the tail (of the car) was over and got nailed. We’ll look into it and see what happened.”

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. Cup cars don’t have speedometers, so drivers must calculate their speed using the tachometer. (For example, 4,200 rpm in second gear might equal 55 mph, the pit road speed at Pocono.)

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. We put the loops in the racetrack, and it’s just simple math. There’s a lot of changes that went on here between last year and this year, gear changes and everything. . . .

“There’s nothing wrong with the loops. It is what it is.”

NASCAR Wire Service
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