Pit Road Speed To Be Electronically Timed
Pit Road Speed to be electronically timed: Nextel Cup Series
director John Darby says hardware for the pit road speeding system
is being installed at racetracks and NASCAR hopes to have software
perfected in time to use it at the Feb. 20 Daytona 500. NASCAR
enforces speed limits on pit road to help protect crewmembers from
being hit by cars. Teams have complained that the old monitoring
system, which involved officials timing cars by hand with
stopwatches, led to inconsistent and inaccurate enforcement. Darby
says there wasn't anything wrong with the old system but NASCAR is
changing at the teams' request. Under the old system, Darby says,
officials had discretion to not penalize drivers who might have sped
on pit road, for example, to avoid an accident. But with electronic
monitoring, Darby says, officials have no choice but to make
speeding penalties black and white, regardless of the circumstances.
(USA Today)
New timing system may make for slow going in pits
By Chris Jenkins
USA Today
Team members yearning for more consistent enforcement of pit road
speeding penalties are about to get their wish in the form of a new
electronic monitoring system. But to hear Nextel Cup Series director
John Darby explain it, the teams' next wish might be to go back to
the old system.
"I think the line of 'be careful what you ask for' people is going
to be way long for a while," Darby says. "Because one thing about
doing it electronically is it's hard-fast. And the day somebody's
got to goose a throttle a little bit to avoid a wreck and they get
nailed for speeding, it's not going to make sense to them. So that's
the downside."
Darby says hardware for the system is being installed at racetracks
and NASCAR hopes to have software perfected in time to use it at the
Feb. 20 Daytona 500. NASCAR enforces speed limits on pit road to
help protect crewmembers from being hit by cars.
Teams have complained that the old monitoring system, which involved
officials timing cars by hand with stopwatches, led to inconsistent
and inaccurate enforcement.
"The more gray areas that we get out of everything in NASCAR, the
better off we're going to be," says Chad Knaus, Jimmie Johnson's
crew chief.
Knaus believes an undeserved speeding penalty cost the No. 48 team a
good finish in a race at Dover (Del.) International Speedway last
September. The incident prompted team owner Rick Hendrick to call on
NASCAR to begin using an electronic system.
Tommy Baldwin Jr., Kasey Kahne's crew chief, also is in favor of the
electronic system. "That will keep everybody honest," Baldwin
says. "It just brings everybody back down to a level playing field."
Darby says there wasn't anything wrong with the old system but
NASCAR is changing at the teams' request. Under the old system,
Darby says, officials had discretion to not penalize drivers who
might have sped on pit road, for example, to avoid an accident.
But with electronic monitoring, Darby says, officials have no choice
but to make speeding penalties black and white, regardless of the
circumstances.
Knaus says NASCAR could avoid problems by allowing teams to install
electronic speed sensors on their cars. Current cars don't have
speedometers; drivers have to determine the proper speed by lining
up behind the pace car before the race - an inexact science at best.
"If it does get to the point where they're going to start hitting us
pretty hard for speeding, then they have to give us something that's
more accurate than what we've got," Knaus says.
Says Baldwin: "You'd probably be better to take it a little bit
easy, don't make any mistakes, rather than pushing it. But there'll
be a lot of guys getting caught."
~ deej