NASCAR confirmed Monday to NBC Sports that there will be no pit road timing zones added for this week’s races at Bristol Motor Speedway. The track already has 14 such timing zones.
Bristol hosts the Camping World Truck Series race Wednesday night, the Xfinity Series race Friday night and the Sprint Cup Series race Saturday night.
NASCAR has added timing zones since the Sprint Cup and Xfinity races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in July and begun enforcing those zones since the July Cup and Xfinity races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There were 18 timing zones at Pocono Raceway after those were doubled for the Camping World Truck and Sprint Cup races last month.
In the three Cup races that have had the additional timing zones enforced, pit road speeding penalties are up 375 percent compared to the three races before NASCAR made the change.
NASCAR is not making a change at Bristol because it is comfortable with the timing zones there. In the spring race, there were a season-high 17 speeding penalties in the Cup race. David Ragan and Kyle Larson each had three speeding penalties, Kyle Busch and Michael McDowell had two each, and Brad Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson, Ty Dillon (driving for Tony Stewart), Austin Dillon, Greg Biffle, Josh Wise and Ryan Newman each had one in that race.
In the last four Cup races at Bristol, there have been an average of 11.3 speeding penalties issued.