Nothing wrong with timing segments on Pocono pit road

NASCAR: Nothing wrong with timing segments on Pocono pit road

June 10, 2012

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

LONG POND, Pa. -- When it came to pit road, all Sunday's Pocono 400 presented by #NASCAR lacked was a fleet of cop cars with flashing lights and sirens.

All told, NASCAR handed out 22 pit road speeding penalties, with most offenders clocked too fast at the exit from pit road. That easily eclipsed the Sprint Cup Series record of 14 speeding penalties at Kansas in 2006.

Jimmie Johnson's recent surge was derailed -- at least to some extent -- by two speeding penalties, both on exit. Johnson lost a lap, got it back and eventually finished fourth behind winner Joey Logano. Though he salvaged a top-five, Johnson was convinced there was something wrong with the final segment (or timing loop) on pit road.

Nothing wrong, says NASCAR, just different.

"There is a segment down there where something is just not like it normally is," Johnson said after the race. "I got nailed twice, and I know a lot of other guys got nailed. There's something wrong with the timing loop, and the orange line (at the end of pit road) and the way the drivers interact with that.

"Normally, when we hit the orange line (which NASCAR refers to as yellow), we go, and I did that the first time we got nailed. The second time, I waited until the tail (of the car) was over and got nailed. We'll look into it and see what happened."

NASCAR measures pit road speed from the yellow line at the entrance to pit road to the yellow line at the exit. The full distance is divided into segments, and drivers must average the speed limit (plus a tolerance of 4.99 mph) through each segment. Cup cars don't have speedometers, so drivers must calculate their speed using the tachometer. (For example, 4,200 rpm in second gear might equal 55 mph, the pit road speed at Pocono.)

The 2.5-mile race track was repaved this year, and pit road was lengthened. The number of segments grew from 10 to 11, and the length of the final segment increased from 56 to 83 feet. NASCAR provides specific information on the pit road configuration to any team that wants it.

The changes from one year to the next, however, seems to have confounded more than one driver/crew chief combination, but NASCAR stood by the accuracy of its measurements.

"Our position is like it's always been -- yellow line to yellow line," said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition. "This track's gone under a lot of reconfiguration since last year. It's all brand-new pit road, all brand-new loops. Positions have been changed since last year. Sections are smaller than they were last year throughout pit road -- and actually, the last section's a little bit bigger.

"But the bottom line is, every week when we go into a race track, there's maps that are printed back here for the crew chiefs to come get. Some choose to get 'em, some choose to measure their own lines, and some go off of last year's measurements. We put the loops in the racetrack, and it's just simple math. There's a lot of changes that went on here between last year and this year, gear changes and everything. . . .

"There's nothing wrong with the loops. It is what it is."

EARNHARDT BACKS CREW CHIEF'S CALL

Even though drivers who chose not to pit on Lap 137 -- including race winner Logano -- gambled and won, eighth-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr. said crew chief Steve Letarte's call to refuel under caution on that lap was the right one.

Earnhardt had one of the strongest cars at Pocono. He led 36 laps, second only to Logano's 49. But neither the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet nor his crew chief was willing to gamble their position in the Sprint Cup standings by risking an empty fuel cell.

Earnhardt is second in points, 10 behind leader Matt Kenseth, and there are 12 races left before the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup field is set at Richmond.

"I back his call that he made today," Earnhardt said of Letarte. "I don't like running out of gas. I ran out of gas here one year, and that pisses me off so bad that it's hard to recover from it the next couple of weeks. I'm not going to give up 30 points or 20 points in a race -- not just yet. I like the call we made today.

"We raced back up to eighth. Didn't win the race. Might not have won the race. Might have run third -- I don't know. It was the right call for us at this time. We had a really, really good car. That was fun. That was the funnest car I've had all year and the best car I've had at Pocono in a long, long time. I'm trying not to be too upset about it, because we did a lot of good things today, and we've got a lot to look forward to."

MORE TROUBLE FOR ALLMENDINGER

It was bad enough that AJ Allmendinger's No. 22 Penske Dodge was swept up in an accident in the third corner of the first lap. Worse was the hit he took when his car slammed the Turn 2 wall on Lap 65, after blowing a tire.

Worse than the impact, which Allmendinger described as one of the hardest hits of his career, was yet another day of wretched luck. Allmendinger finished 31st and dropped two spots to 25th in the standings, hardly the way he imagined his first season with team owner Roger Penske.

"There are no words to explain it," Allmendinger said after the wreck. "In my worst nightmare, I didn't think the season would go this bad. You've got two options: you quit, or you keep working harder.

"I've been six years in this. I've experienced bad stuff before in NASCAR, so I ain't going to quit. We'll just keep working harder. We've got to figure out how to turn it around."