Taking the guesswork out of pit road timing lines

The Xfinity teams had the benefit of practicing pit stops with the timing line monitor on Friday. Cup teams had the monitor in the garage for second practice and Happy Hour on Saturday. 

Pit road timing lines

Photo by: NASCAR Media

The tool was offered to teams by NASCAR this weekend following 13 speeding penalties in the Cup race at Atlanta and two during the Xfinity event. 

“Today was a good opportunity that NASCAR gave us for both practices to have pit road speed,” said Team Penske competition director Travis Geisler. “I think we used it to do normal running down pit road so you could check your tach, make sure your lights and all of your calculations are right. But you could also do kind of a hot-pit road entry for that first box in off of the track. 

“This is a place where you can probably expect a green-flag pit stop and our drivers need to be on their game for that first box. Whether we have it or not, it’s a difficult thing to say whether it’s good or bad. I probably err on the side of less information because I think it’s more kind of traditional stock car racing where we make use of the tools we have. The more tools we have, the closer it gets and maybe the less discrepancy there is among cars on pit road.”

More timing lines for 2017

NASCAR increased the number of timing lines at Atlanta from nine in 2016 to 16 in 2017. The lines have nearly doubled at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with 15 timing lines and 14 pit speed sections. 

Kurt Busch is very cognizant of the timing line change at his hometown track. 

“Pit road timing zones used to be around 300 feet apart,” Busch said. “Now they’re 150 feet apart. So when you’re traveling at 45 miles per hour, 150 feet goes by really quick and you have no time to give back any extra speed that you might have carried through that segment. I have my lights and the way they’re set up is if I flicker red, I should be OK, but you’re thinking in the back of your mind, ‘Oh no, I don’t need to have any red anymore because the segments are so close.’  

“This weekend will be brutal because we’ve never had these timing lines here at Vegas and Vegas is notoriously difficult on speeders, so it’s a matter of getting back to all of these tracks with this new timing system.”

Being aggressive vs being cautious 

Busch was cautious at Atlanta last weekend. His teammate Kevin Harvick, who dominated the race, wasn’t so lucky. Harvick was busted on pit road after leading 292 of 325 laps during his final pit stop. 

Penske driver Joey Logano was one of the 11 drivers busted for exceeding the speed limit at Atlanta. He recovered with a sixth-place finish after receiving a speeding penalty on Lap 119. Geisler believes the drivers are still getting back in the groove after a long off-season. But after  monitoring pit practice at Las Vegas on Saturday, Geisler would prefer his drivers not take any chances on Sunday. 

“The more timing lines you have, the tighter the window is so the shorter the distance they average your speed over,” Geisler added. “So if a driver makes a small mistake, he doesn’t have as much room to recover and kind of average out the speed over a longer period. I think that will take the drivers some time to get adjusted to.

“We started to do that at the end of last year, so I don’t think it’s brand new. But sometimes, guys forget a little bit and they have to get tuned back up. I think that’s what we’re going through right now.”