The Cool Down Lap: Speeding or not, it’s time for the world to see the numbers

The Cool Down Lap: Speeding or not, it’s time for the world to see the numbers

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
(April 4, 2011)
Good morning, NASCAR. This is your Monday wakeup call.
It’s 65 degrees and sunny, and you have a credibility problem.
Who says so? Your five-time defending Sprint Cup champion. That’s who says so.
The good news is that it’s a problem with a quick, definitive fix.
A pit-road speeding penalty late in Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway cost Jimmie Johnson any chance he might have had for a victory at the .526-mile short track. He took the checkered flag in 11th place, his first finish outside the top 10 since April 14, 2002, his first race at NASCAR’s oldest speedway.
To say that Johnson was miffed at the penalty is putting it mildly. First, he was adamant that he wasn’t speeding. Second, he accused NASCAR of reaction to perception, rather than reality.
“I wasn’t speeding,” Johnson said.” They didn’t like how it looked—the way I managed my timing lines. There is just no way. People will say whatever, but with the math and the way we know our timing lines, there is just no way.”
We’ve heard the refrain before. A speeding penalty spoiled Juan Pablo Montoya’s dominating run at Indianapolis in 2009.
“I swear on my children and my wife, I wasn’t speeding,” Montoya radioed to crew chief Brian Pattie after NASCAR informed the team of the penalty. “There is no way. Thank you, NASCAR, for screwing my day.”
According to NASCAR, Montoya was speeding through two timed segments of pit road in 2009. According to NASCAR, Johnson traveled 35.53 mph between timing lines entering pit road on Sunday.
Pit road speed at Martinsville was 30 mph, plus a 5 mph tolerance that’s common to every racetrack. Pit road is divided into timed segments, and drivers must remain below the speed limit-plus-tolerance, on average, through each segment.
When a driver speeds through any of the segments, the speed registers on a computer in NASCAR scoring and glows red. Teams are allowed to view a printout of their segments after the fact.
Crew chiefs and drivers try to push their pit-road speeds to the absolute limit. That’s their job. Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus have refined timing-line management to a science. If you choose a pit stall, for instance, that’s just beyond a timing line, you can drive as fast as you can exiting the pit box through the rest of that segment because, having stopped for 12-14 seconds, you can’t possibly exceed the average speed.
That’s why Johnson’s Chevrolet looked like a dragster Sunday relative to other cars rolling through the timing zone that contained his pit stall. That’s one of the reasons he was first off pit road after his first two pit stops.
But was Johnson speeding on entry late in the race? Sorry, yes. And was Montoya speeding at Indy? Yes to that one, too. The computers and transponders that measure pit-road speeds are precise, even if the devices that measure them inside the cars are not. With no speedometers, drivers must rely on an RPM calculation and sequential lights that tell them when they’re approaching the danger zone.
In that respect, it’s almost like eyeballing the spot of a football and then measuring to the precision of one chain link.
But that’s not the problem.
On Sunday night, nearly three hours after the race ended, Johnson posted the following comment on his Twitter account: “If NASCAR wanted to eliminate speeding controversy, they would post the times for the world to see.”
He’s right. It’s no longer enough to show teams a printout after the penalty or after the race. Speeds need to be available real-time in the TV booth and in the press box, so media can reassure viewers that justice was done.
For that matter, fans in the grandstands should have access to the same information, whether on a scoreboard, FanView or smart phone.
It’s all about perception. NASCAR can do everything right and still have its enforcement questioned, if the process appears shrouded in secrecy.
If there’s a reason not to enhance the fan experience while simultaneously bolstering the credibility of the sport, let’s hear it.