Quick Takeaways from Kentucky: Examining Truex's pit road penalty
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• Martin Truex Jr. was confused as to why he got a pit road penalty during the last caution of the evening at Kentucky Speedway on Saturday night.
[Related: Brad Keselowski wins at Kentucky thanks to his fuel conservation]
Truex entered pit road second behind Kevin Harvick and his pit was closer to the entrance of pit road than Harvick’s. So Truex dove to Harvick’s left and mashed the gas to get to his pit stall while Harvick motored down pit road towards his.
Pit lane in NASCAR is treated similarly to a highway. The outside lane is for passing and it’s not permissible to pass in the inside lane.
But here’s where it gets tricky. NASCAR has timing lines stationed throughout pit road to monitor a car’s speed via time over the distance traveled. Drivers know that they can go as fast as possible in the timing segment their pit box is located in because the overall time of the pit stop will slow their average speed in the segment to prevent a speeding penalty.
So Truex did what every other driver in the field does. He sped up once he got to the timing segment his pit stall was located in. He just might have made it too obvious.
“I did the same thing guys do every week,” Truex said. “You get to your timing line, you step on the gas and you head straight towards your pit. So obviously I turned left and came up next to [Harvick] as I did it, as I was driving to my pit which guys do every week. I don’t know why it was different today. I would think that if they didn’t want us to do that any more they’d tell us in the driver meeting.
“But hell, it’s every week. I’ve been passed on pit road 15 times this year the same exact way. I didn’t see it get penalized. I guess when you’re doing it for a win it’s different circumstances or something.”
The penalty meant Truex was forced to restart at the tail end of the field. Given the speed (perhaps powered by frustration) he showed in climbing up to third before a late pit stop to top off his fuel tank, Truex (who finished 10th) can legitimately think he was denied a chance at a win Saturday night.
• Crashes at intermediate tracks have disappeared in recent years. Thanks to Kentucky’s new racing surface and the lower downforce rules in effect for the race, they were back with a vengeance Saturday night.
Jimmie Johnson got loose shortly after a restart early in the race and smashed into the wall exiting turn 4. Not long after Johnson crashed, so too did Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott. Blaney’s car got loose and as he spun, he clipped Elliott’s car.
There was a massive crash on the backstretch too. Brian Scott got loose and with the help of a bump from Kyle Larson, started sliding sideways on the backstretch. Chris Buescher piled into Scott’s sliding car and other drivers, including AJ Allmendinger, Ty Dillon and Danica Patrick, were also collected.
The wreck was Scott’s sixth in the past seven Sprint Cup races. The only race in that span without a crash was Sonoma, where he finished 33rd.
• Scott is also a good segue into an entry about Tony Stewart’s points position. Stewart finished fifth on Saturday and as we said last week, has absolutely nothing to worry about when it comes to finishing the regular season in the top 30 in points.
Stewart is still 30th in the points standings but he gained 28 points on Scott, the driver in 31st. Stewart’s now got a 31-point cushion despite having eight fewer starts in 2016.
• Back to the lower downforce rules for a moment. It seemed that drivers couldn’t race closely nose-to-tail because of lack of airflow on the shorter spoilers.
But as we warned heading into the weekend, it’s tough to take anything tangible away from Kentucky given the circumstances surrounding the race. Fresh pavement means lots of grip from the pavement and high speeds and then Goodyear is forced to make a harder tire compound.
A harder tire compound means less grip for the tires and lower downforce means less aerodynamic grip.
As proponents of chopping off as much downforce from Sprint Cup cars as possible, we’re not going to try to draw many conclusions from Saturday night’s race regarding the rules. Though we are wondering just how possible Truex’s run from the back of the pack to the front over the last 70 laps would have been under the 2015 rules.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
