Obviously pit stops and pit strategy get bathed in the spotlight when the circus goes to the roadcoarses. The basic idea is to get as good of fuel mileage as you can and be the first one to make your last pitstop. Of course for this to work well, you have to have a good pitstop and you have to have good pit in and pit out laps, so the pit road speed calculation becomes of paramount importance.

At the road courses ( and the 2 short tracks) the pit road speed is 35mph, which is impossibly slow. Most drivers will enter pit road in first gear since the speed is so low (2nd is normal everywhere else). So it is the engineers responsibility to use the gear ratios in the transmission, the rear gear ratio, and the tire diameter to figure out what engine rpm corresponds to 35 mph. This number is printed out and taped to the dash for Rob. Obviously the cars have no speedometer, but the tachometer (rpm gauge) is just as good. You will notice if you listen to the radio communication on trackpass that the pace car will actually travel at pitroad speed during one of the parade laps before the race. During this lap the driver can double check the pit road RPM calculation against what the engineers have calculated. The trick of this calculation is that NASCAR will not bust you for pit road speed unless you go 5mph over, so really the effective pit speed is 40mph. This is meant to protect the drivers from slightly overrevving, but savvy teams will use this to an advantage and push the envelope just a little bit.

Now, NASCAR checks pitroad speed at every track with 8 scoring loops that are usually evenly spaced every 6-8 spots on pit road. The signal goes through a little data box and shows up on some NASCAR officials screen (I assume) and the penalties are assed from there. Now, the engineers on each team will go out to pitroad on the Saturday before the race and locate all of the timing marks and give them to the crew cheif. The crew chief can use this information to pick a pit that is close to one of these marks so that one timing mark is effectively out of the question. You can speed between these marks, and there is no way for NASCAR to tell, so if you eliminate a timing mark by pitting close to one when the driver will be braking to pit, you eliminate a chance to get caught speeding.

Robby will probably qualify well, so they will probably pick pits based on other considerations, but this strategy helps on the ovals too.