Timing Lines Allow Teams To Gain An Advantage

Two weeks ago, Jeff Gordon was penalized for a pit road speed violation at Martinsville, one of six teams busted for speeding during the race. Last week, the four-time Sprint Cup champion spoke out against the current method of timing cars on pit road. Gordon said the infraction stemmed from the teams attempt to take advantage of the placement of the speed lines to gain extra time on pit road. Gordon suggested that NASCAR should eliminate the timing lines of pit road, and instead use the newly introduced camera system for speeding penalties.

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The Current Rules
In the last race of the 1990 season, Ricky Rudd lost control of his car on pit road at Atlanta Motor Speedway. After spinning 180 degrees, Rudd’s car slammed into the right rear corner of Bill Elliott’s car while it was being services by his crew. Mike Rich, Elliott’s rear tire changer, died as a result of the accident. By the beginning of the 1991 season, NASCAR was experimenting with ways to prevent similar incidents. Within the first few months, a pit road speed limit had been established for every track.

Currently, NASCAR uses a system of cameras to observe pit stops and automatically issue penalties with the oversight of a team of officials. Speed violations, however, are still calculated based on evenly spaced lines painted across pit road, known as timing lines. Gordon praised the new system for forcing both drivers and teams to pay more attention to their work on pit road, because many violations that used to slip by pit road officials are now automatically caught by the new technology. He feels that this system would also make the enforcement of the pit road speed limit more consistent.

How Teams Are Abusing Timing Lines
Sprint Cup teams are known for pushing the limits to gain an advantage anywhere they can, and this often includes bending rules. The downfall of the timing lines is they cannot track the speed of individual cars if they do not cross more than one timing line. This means that, depending on the location of a team’s pit stall, the driver can exceed the speed limit after they cross the last timing line before their box or accelerate leaving their stall as long as they slow to the proper speed limit before crossing the next timing line.

In his comments, Gordon admitted that the pit road speeding penalty he received at Martinsville was due to his team deliberately attempting to take advantage of the placement of the timing lines on pit road. “What we do is find pit stalls to try to get around that,” he said. “So we’re ramping up and slowing down and that’s what got us in Martinsville. We were just too aggressive with it.”

Possible Future Changes
NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer Steve O’Donnell issued a statement emphasizing the role the pit road timing loops play in the overall scoring system used by NASCAR to track scoring. This is something, however, he said, that the sanctioning body hopes to work with drivers on improving. This may eventually be accomplished by tying the timing and scoring system into the new technology used on pit road.

For today, however, the timing lines remain. While the rules state that the speed limit covers the entirety of pit road, teams will most likely continue to try gain an advantage by speeding between the timing lines.