April 11, 2011
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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With all of the modern technology that goes on around NASCAR races these days, why is it a simple thing like a speeding penalty can cause such headaches for drivers and fans alike?
This past week, there had been a lot of discussion, not about the fact that Kevin Harvick won his second race in a row last Sunday in Martinsville, but the fact that five-time Champion Jimmie Johnson was busted for a speeding penalty, and then made a misinformed accusation after climbing out of the car -- about the way speeds are monitored on pit road during a race.
“With the math and the way we know our timing lines, there is just no way (we were speeding)," said Johnson. "You accelerate real hard through your timing zone. A lot of guys get dinged for that. I've been dinged a couple of different times. Usually you get dinged when you pass someone or break the plane of the car in front of you.
"With no one there, I accelerated like I always do from my mark. There is just no way. There is just no way. It won't do me any good to have a conversation, it isn't going to matter. I guess I just can't attack pit road like I know I can and like I did every single time before this,” was what Johnson said post-race last weekend.
Because Johnson rarely speaks out against NASCAR, fans took the comments and ran with them.
He added fuel to the fire on Sunday evening after the race with a post on Twitter to ESPN analyst Marty Smith. “If NASCAR wanted to eliminate speeding controversy, they would post the times for the world to see.”
There is often a small group of fans who have said NASCAR should post the speeds of cars that are dinged on pit road, but is that more information than we, the fans, really need to know? If the networks started airing every single speed at every single timing line on pit road, we’d never see the actual pit stops.
We are already provided with a running clock of the pit stop itself, and a breakdown of time spent changing each tire and gassing the car. We are given the speeds of cars as they make their laps around the track, and distances between each car and the leader, or the cars around them. We are given access to radio frequencies where we can listen in on the conversations between the drivers and crew -- and we don’t even have to be at the track to listen -- in thanks to services like NASCAR.com’s Trackpass or Sirius XM’s “Driver to Crew” channels, which are dedicated to just one specific driver and their conversations during the race.
For all the information we have available to us, it seems misinformation is still abundant, as Jimmie found out later after talking with NASCAR officials.
“The comments following the race (Sunday in Martinsville) were made without all the information, and the fact of the matter was, we were wrong," Johnson admitted last week. "I was misinformed, and was referring to a segment (on pit road) where we could not get busted in. I thought that's where we were busted. And at the end of the day, that wasn't the thing we got in trouble on."
This week, FOX Sports took the opportunity to look at NASCAR’s “speeding” computer during the race, and, for example, when Tony Stewart was caught speeding on pit road, showed the number pop up in red on the computer. Tony knew he had been speeding at the time, and took the blame, never doubting the validity of NASCAR’s judgment.
However, fans complain enough as it is about not getting to see everything that happens on the track. If the networks were to cut away to show us every speeding infraction as it happened on the track, or showed every driver’s speed on pit road as they entered and exited the pits, we’d never see the cars racing on the track at all.
The joy of advanced technology is, it is hard to argue with it. While the drivers might complain that there was no way they were speeding, the electronics rarely lie. Gone are the days of speeds being tallied by stop watches and quickly scribbled math. Sensors in the track and on the cars are always talking with each other, and if we don’t doubt the speeds they are telling us as the cars race at full throttle on the track, why should we doubt them when the car is going considerably slower during a pit stop?
“The picture becomes so much clearer once you have all the information in front of you. So once we had that on Monday, it was like, ‘Oh, all right, we're talking about different segments’," Johnson acknowledged.
Just before noon on Tuesday, Johnson even joked on Twitter “Note to self... Be sure to know the segment NASCAR has penalized me in. At least I wasn't in the zone I was talking about.”
Follow Kim on Twitter: @ksrgatorfn
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