Speeding penalties questioned after Section 7 anomaly sent contender to rear at Pocono late

On Sunday at Pocono Raceway, NASCAR Cup Series drivers were taken back when they realized everyone was speeding on pit road. Well, not everyone. More than 30 drivers sped on pit road during pre-race checks.

Prior to starting a race, NASCAR allows teams to do a test run down pit road. Make sure they have the speeds down right. At Pocono, many drivers were caught speeding prerace. It all had to do with Section 7 of pit road.

On The Teardown, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic talked about the strange anomaly. Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, two race leaders, were hit with penalties late in the race, taking them out of contention.

“Section 7 of pit road before the race, the whole, all the team radios were lighting up. Like, oh my gosh, 33 cars, according to Chris Gabehart he said all but four sped in this section during their pit road speed checks coming down on the pace laps,” Gluck explained. “But nobody ever got caught there I don’t believe until the very last key stop where four drivers suddenly get nailed. Including Larson, who I believe had come off first off pit road and Elliott who had come off pit road third. Then they have to go to the back. Larson ends up P13, Elliott ends up P9, but we could have had a different narrative potentially about this.”

This race would have played out a lot differently without those penalties. Both Larson and Elliott were involved. Ryan Blaney didn’t mind running away with the win, though.

Speeding at Pocono costs multiple teams

After Gluck gave his thoughts on the speeding penalties at Pocono, his co-host chimed in. Bianchi thought back to another instance of strange pit road speeding issues – this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

“I was surprised about the Section 7 though,” Bianchi said. “Because you see it happen prerace, you know they come down pit road for their check, you’re like, ‘Wait a second, all these guys do their due diligence all the time, what’s going on, this seems very odd.’ Then I was thinking, I think it was at Pocono, it may have been Michigan a few years ago where there was a rash of penalties, pit road penalties. … I don’t know why.

“It wasn’t an issue the rest of the way, so it leads me to believe that whatever the issue was was corrected and like they all scaled it back. For whatever reason, maybe because it’s the last cycle of pit stops or whatever. They pushed it too far, I didn’t quite understand it but it certainly threw a wrench in how this proceeds. Again, that doesn’t happen, I think Chase Elliott’s someone to be reckoned with.”

For the most part, drivers kept their cool. Late, when the pressure was on, a few got caught off guard. Larson, Elliott, Austin Cindric, and Daniel Suárez were all hit with penalties. All four drivers drove into the top-20 by the end of the race.

If they hadn’t been caught speeding, would Larson or Elliott have won on Sunday?