Measuring pit road speed under scrutiny
Johnson says NASCAR should look for alternative after penalty
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TALLADEGA, Ala. - A costly penalty to championship contender Jimmie Johnson last week has put NASCAR’s longtime method of measuring pit road speeds under intense scrutiny.
“It’s just a typical disagreement,” said Johnson, who was sent to the rear of the longest line by NASCAR, dropping him from fourth to 18th after the disputed call. He eventually lost a lap and wound up finishing 10th, leaving Johnson fourth in the standings, just 39 points behind leader Jeff Gordon going into Sunday’s EA Sports 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.
“I felt I was doing the pit road speed and they thought I was speeding. They have the final say in things, so I had to come down and serve a penalty,” Johnson said. “That was last weekend. It’s no use really harping on it.”
But Johnson did say that the way NASCAR currently measures pit road speed needs updating.
“They have people placed at the start-finish line with stopwatches in their hands that time you as you cross the paint lines on the racetrack,” Johnson explained. “It’s pretty difficult to have the right vantage point for all of pit road, I think, for them to have the right angles and nail each timing line correctly.
“For a while, each car is coming at you and then it’s going away from you. That’s where it’s tough to call it correctly.”
Nextel Cup garage boss John Darby said NASCAR has investigated other ways of doing it, but has not yet found anything better.
“You can’t use radar because the focal point of radar is too inaccurate,” he explained. “Some of the GPS systems are out because it’s too easily interfered with from weather and locations of satellites at different times of years. The multiple loop scoring system could be developed for pit road, but it’s going to take some time and more work.”
The pit road speed limit was instituted after Mike Ritch, a crewman for Bill Elliott, was killed at Atlanta Motor Speedway when Ricky Rudd’s car slid into Elliott’s parked car in the pits.
“You’ve got to look at the reason we even have a pit road speed,” Darby said. “To keep the crew members safe on pit road. In doing that, we also understand there’s times when a driver may have to accelerate to avoid an accident, he may have to swerve quickly for something. All of those can have an effect on the elapsed time in regards to crossing a measured path.
“In today’s world, the way pit road speed is monitored, it’s not that we’re interested in penalizing every competitor that’s a half-mile an hour or one mile an hour over the speed limit, just as the state police doesn’t do that on the highways. There’s just too many variables involved. ... If we penalize somebody for speeding, it’s not about a mile an hour, it’s about five or six or seven miles an hour.”
Johnson agrees that NASCAR gives drivers what he called a “fudge factor,” but he’d still like to see a different way of measuring speed adopted.
“I think taking the guesswork out of it is probably the best thing,” Johnson said. “It cuts them a lot of slack. Nobody would be breathing down their necks and if anybody is to blame, it’s the driver.”
Nervous time
For all the bravado displayed by championship contenders since the start of NASCAR’s new 10-man, 10-race Chase for the Nextel Cup, there’s at least one over them who acknowledges it’s a nervous time.
“All the teams, whether they act like it or admit it or not, are really on pins and needles about not having any engines failures and not having any mistakes on pit road,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Saturday. “Four or five of them have already gotten 30th-place finishes somewhere and four or five of us haven’t.
“You think that can separate you from the pack — don’t have that happen. But everybody is really tense and really nervous about it.”
Earnhardt, who goes into Sunday’s race — the third of the final 10 — third in the standings, just 17 points behind leader Jeff Gordon, notes it is important to stay optimistic.
“There are two things you can do,” he said. “You can freeze up and say ’This is what won, we’ll run this and fail or succeed.’ Or you can freak out and starting slinging everything you have at it.
“It’s impossible for even some of the best in the business to know what their strategy is going to be over a period of eight races,” Earnhardt added. “I think it’s just one week at a time.”
No shows
Despite considerable preparation and planning for a possible protest on Saturday at Talladega by a group calling itself the National Association for Minority Race Fans, nobody showed up.
Track officials said they have not heard from the association since Friday when they offered the group a 7-acre area near the main entrance of the track for its proposed protests. There remained the possibility that protesters would turn up on Sunday, but track president Grant Lynch said the NAMRF has given no details of its plans to track or law enforcement officials.
The group sent a letter to the state asking to be able to hold a peaceful demonstration at Talladega, prompting track officials to meet with highway patrol and sheriff’s department representatives to determine a site on the speedway grounds.
Calls to the association were not returned.
The group’s Web site still had a message Saturday stating there would be a protest at Talladega but did not give any details.
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