ALT-2 What are Drive through Penalties
The race is tight. You've been trading the lead all day with your rival, and you're heading into the last leg. After this last pit stop you'll have enough fuel to run the race to the finish. Your crew chief gives the order to come in; you brace yourself for the longest fourteen seconds of your life. You're on pit lane. Your stall comes into view and you slide in, aware that your opponent has just driven past you to reach his own pit stall. You have to finish and get back out on the track to keep first position.
Impatient, you watch your crew service your car. Sweat beads down your face. Then the jack drops and you're off! You peel out of your pit stall, goosing the throttle as you head towards the open track. Your opponent's stall comes into view and you see that he is about to pull out of his pit stall. Your foot twitches on the throttle. You roll past him and off pit road back onto the track in first place. You did it!
Then your crew chief's voice crackles over the radio: "They caught you speeding off pit lane. They're giving you a pass through penalty." Like the puff of breath you exhale, your chances of winning are up in smoke.
Pass through penalties are the bane of drivers' existence, but are a necessary part of modern NASCAR. The biggest potential for serious injury is on pit lane, where the race continues to get cars serviced and onto the track. Crewmen dash over the wall and kneel with their backs to the oncoming traffic. Cars pull into and out of their stalls without turn signals or any warning they are moving into oncoming traffic. NASCAR instituted a pit lane speed limit to minimize pit lane collisions. The speed limit is strictly enforced with the pass through penalty.
A driver serves a pass through penalty by driving the length of pit lane at the prescribed pit lane speed. NASCAR monitors speed by use of sensors placed at various intervals along pit lane. If a car is above pit speed when it passes a sensor, NASCAR will assign a pass through penalty. If a car travels from one sensor to another faster than it should (ie, if it is under speed at the sensor but speeds up and slows down between sensors), a pass through penalty can be assigned as well. Drivers must serve the pass through penalty at their earliest opportunity. The pass through penalty is assigned during green light racing. If a driver speeds on pit lane during a caution period, he must restart at the back of the field, also called "the tail end of the longest line" by NASCAR enthusiasts.
The consequences of the pass through penalty are enormous, particularly at the super speedways of Daytona and Talladega where top speed is near 200 miles per hour, pit speed is 45 miles per hour, and it takes more than half of the 2.5 mile track to come up to full speed. Drivers are guaranteed to lose a full lap at these tracks. The penalties are more recoverable at the shorter tracks such as Bristol or Martinsville, where top speeds are lower and drivers can make up one or more laps if their cars are fast enough.
Like the off side penalty in football, the pass through penalty can be easily avoided by being patient and careful. At 190 mile per hour, that takes nerves of steel, a trademark of the very best drivers of NASCAR.
