Atlanta’s pit road provides key challenge for NASCAR Cup drivers

HAMPTON, Ga. — Pit road could prove pivotal in today’s Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

There were numerous incidents on pit road with cars making contact and several speeding penalties last year at Atlanta.

At least half a dozen drivers had some contact on pit road in last year’s playoff race.

“I definitely think, especially as it continues, we’re probably going to need a little bit something different of a pit road at some point,” Carson Hocevar said. “Just wider. The boxes are small and it’s tight, so if they could somehow make it wider somehow, I think, it would be a bigger deal.

“At the same time, all of us have to figure it out, too. They don’t have to change it. … The only worry is that there’s crew guys out on pit road that things get really tight.”

The issue is that it’s such a penalty to pit under green — pit road entrance is in Turn 3 instead of off Turn 4 — that the field will wait to pit under caution if possible. With pack racing, few cars are off the lead lap, meaning when pit road opens for the first time it is likely to have more than 30 cars head to the pits.

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The 1.54-mile track produced the closest three-wide finish in NASCAR history a year ago.

With cars entering and exiting their stalls, that can create contact.

“You watch videos back on this place and there was a lot of people that had contact on pit road,” Chris Buescher said. “It does get really tight here. It’s a superspeedway now in a lot of ways. It’s like Daytona, we all come down at the same time, very close together. This pit road is incredibly small compared to Daytona.

“(Pit) box is small. Pit road is really narrow. Yes, we have an exit through the grass. I raced Legends cars around here a lot growing up and spent probably an unfortunate amount of time in that grass. I can tell you it’s not smooth, either. It’s an escape but you certainly don’t want to be there. Everything is tighter here for pit road.”

Another issue are the pit road speeding penalties. There were 10 in last year’s playoff race and 14 in last February’s race. Those were the two highest total of pit road speeding penalties last season in Cup.

Under green flag conditions, the pit road speed limit is 90 mph from the entrance of Turn 3 through Turn 4 on the apron. Once drivers get to pit road — marked by a yellow line — the speed limit is 45 mph.

Under yellow flag conditions, pit road speed is 45 mph from when teams enter the lane at the entrance of Turn 3.

Teams are warned that if they cut the radius too much on the apron in Turns 3 and 4 that can cause them to exceed the speed limit for those zones.

“It’s a tricky pit road,” Alex Bowman said. “The straight part of pit road is super bumpy, so it’s hard to hold your lights (gauging pit road speed).”