#48-Jimmie Johnson DID serve the pass-thru penalty after getting caught speeding on his final pit stop at Kansas Speedway [on the final lap as the checkered flag fell]. On Speed’s Victory Lane it was mentioned Johnson had not served the penalty, no place else was it reported, it was reported on MRN coverage that Johnson did serve the penalty, Larry McRaynolds explains this at FoxSports.com: “There’s no question that he served the penalty. It’s the reason he finished 14th. The #48 car had a pretty good lead when he attempted to make his green-flag stop. Most of the cars running near the front Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards made pit stops as well. Those guys ended up finishing in front of Johnson because they did have to serve a pass-through penalty. As he [Johnson] approached pit road to make his green-flag stop, the #9 car spun out coming to pit road. Making a great move back on the track, Johnson anticipated that a caution was going to come out. If the caution had been thrown, a ton of cars would have gone a lap down, and he would have been in pretty good shape. Johnson probably would have come to pit road and taken four fresh tires, which would have put him in position to win the race. Unfortunately for Johnson, the caution did not wave. When he finally came back around to make a green-flag stop, he knew that he had given up a lot of time slowing down to come to pit road and then getting back up to speed on the last lap. There’s a chance that he went over the speed limit to make up ground. If pit road speed at Kansas was 45 mph, Johnson was going in excess of 50 in at least one of the eight to 10 sections of pit road measured by loops. He only had to be speeding in one of those sections to get penalized. The penalty under green is called a pass-through. The driver has to come back to pit road. He doesn’t have to stop in his pits, but he must maintain pit road speed. His Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Kyle Busch, was caught speeding under caution at lap 196, and the penalty under caution is starting at the tailend of the longest line.”(10-3-2006)
