HAMPTON, Ga. — Pit street may show pivotal in immediately’s Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
There have been quite a few incidents on pit street with vehicles making contact and a number of other dashing penalties final yr at Atlanta.
Not less than half a dozen drivers had some contact on pit street in final yr’s playoff race.
“I positively suppose, particularly because it continues, we’re most likely going to want a little bit bit one thing completely different of a pit street sooner or later,” Carson Hocevar stated. “Simply wider. The containers are small and it’s tight, so if they may someway make it wider someway, I feel, it could be an even bigger deal.
“On the similar time, all of us must determine it out, too. They don’t have to vary it. … The one fear is that there’s crew guys out on pit street that issues get actually tight.”
The problem is that it’s such a penalty to pit beneath inexperienced — pit street entrance is in Flip 3 as a substitute of off Flip 4 — that the sphere will wait to pit beneath warning if attainable. With pack racing, few vehicles are off the lead lap, which means when pit street opens for the primary time it’s more likely to have greater than 30 vehicles head to the pits.
The 1.54-mile monitor produced the closest three-wide end in NASCAR historical past a yr in the past.
With vehicles coming into and exiting their stalls, that may create contact.
“You watch movies again on this place and there was lots of people that had contact on pit street,” Chris Buescher stated. “It does get actually tight right here. It’s a superspeedway now in quite a lot of methods. It’s like Daytona, all of us come down on the similar time, very shut collectively. This pit street is extremely small in comparison with Daytona.
“(Pit) field is small. Pit street is basically slender. Sure, we’ve got an exit by means of the grass. I raced Legends vehicles round right here lots rising up and spent most likely an unlucky period of time in that grass. I can inform you it’s not easy, both. It’s an escape however you actually don’t need to be there. Every thing is tighter right here for pit street.”
One other difficulty are the pit street dashing penalties. There have been 10 in final yr’s playoff race and 14 in final February’s race. These had been the 2 highest whole of pit street dashing penalties final season in Cup.
Beneath inexperienced flag circumstances, the pit street pace restrict is 90 mph from the doorway of Flip 3 by means of Flip 4 on the apron. As soon as drivers get to pit street — marked by a yellow line — the pace restrict is 45 mph.
Beneath yellow flag circumstances, pit street pace is 45 mph from when groups enter the lane on the entrance of Flip 3.
Groups are warned that in the event that they minimize the radius an excessive amount of on the apron in Turns 3 and 4 that may trigger them to exceed the pace restrict for these zones.
“It’s a difficult pit street,” Alex Bowman stated. “The straight a part of pit street is tremendous bumpy, so it’s laborious to carry your lights (gauging pit street pace).”
