After six races, NASCAR has made the first tweak to the new pit road monitoring system this week. Aspects of the system were used in a number of 2014 races, although they were being tested and not officially in use. Many crew chiefs also got an offseason preview of the technology at the NASCAR Research and Development Center. It made its official debut during the Sprint Unlimited at Daytona. While there were no glitches during that race, the 75-lap exhibition only featured half of the typical number of teams and there were few green flag pit stops.
During a preseason media briefing on the new technology, NASCAR Managing Director of Business Operations for NASCAR Shawn Rogers explained the need for the system as a way to move NASCAR forward. “Paramount to us, we always want to increase our safety when possible, increase our accuracy, be consistent and above all these days, be transparent,” he said.
How It Works
NASCAR now tracks every Sprint Cup pit stop with the help of 45 cameras placed on pit road. When a car comes down pit road, it is tracked using the pit road scoring loops and specially designed tracking software. As the car reaches its pit stall, the system streams live video of the stop into a NASCAR trailer where eight officials are tasked with monitoring the teams. At the same time, the system automatically detects a number of possible infractions.
When a rule violation is noted by the technology, it is replayed for an official who can confirm that an infraction did occur. The official will then notify the scoring tower and the team will be penalized. If he determines nothing was done to violate rules, or if the infraction was unavoidable, he can simply clear it from the system.
An Increase In Penalties
There is no question about whether the new technology has had an impact on the way infractions are reported and handled; pit road penalties have increased more than 52 percent over this time last year.
Only minor rules changes were put into place during the offseason, but the way the sanctioning body tracks mis-steps has changed drastically. In 2014, there were more than 25 officials who monitored pit road. They went over the wall to observe pit stops and report violations. For 2015, only about 10 officials are stationed on pit road. They remain behind the safety of pit wall, where they can monitor actions overlooked by the cameras.
While each pit stop now receives only about eight seconds of attention from NASCAR officials, there is less chance for human error than when officials were observing the pit stops directly from pit road. It is interesting to note that there has also been about a 40 percent increase in pit road speeding penalties in 2015. Speed is still tracked by electronic timing loops, and is unaffected by the new system. Most teams seem to view this as a wake-up call to crack down on pit road discipline: to keep tires under control, to keep equipment in the box and to ensure all team members follow the rules. Others, however, have expressed annoyance at the uptick in penalties.
A Small Tweak to the System
NASCAR announced this week that, beginning with the race at Texas Motor Speedway, all teams will be able to immediately view the video of a pit road rules violation from their pit box during the race. This capability will also be available in the garage beginning at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May.
Currently, these videos are immediately sent to the team hauler where there is adequate bandwidth to handle receiving videos and playing them back. Some of the teams have had the capability of forwarding the video to the crew chief and other crew members on pit road, but others have not. By ensuring all teams have the necessary bandwidth on pit road, NASCAR is allowing teams to see mistakes as quickly as possible in order to appeal to the officials or prevent the same thing from occurring in the future. This is a big step toward the transparency mentioned before the season, and may even prevent some infractions from occurring.
The Duck Commander 500 will take place under the lights at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday, April 11. Television coverage begins at 7 p.m. eastern.