It all started with a late-race incident back at Nashville involving Brad Keselowski and Austin Dillon. While the race was ongoing, a few laps earlier, Dillon felt that he had been wronged by Keselowski. Well, this was speculation which fans felt was proven true when the two made contact again, and Keselowski was sent spinning.

The debate intensified after Keselowski's spotter, TJ Majors, was quick to blame Dillon over the radio. This, in turn, also left many wondering if the contact was intentional.

However, NASCAR will not penalize Dillon as they cleared him of any fault during the incident. Explaining how the review worked, Amanda Ellis told what the officials saw.

As she stated, “When that incident occurred, you do kind of take notice of what happened on the track, right? And we actually have the ability, we mentioned Scott Miller earlier today, or earlier in the recording, and Scott actually very quickly, the moment that wreck happened, pulled all the data from that incident right there.”

According to Ellis, this excellent innovation in tech helped NASCAR arrive at a decision within minutes. “We knew pretty quickly, within so many minutes after that incident, that Austin was out of the throttle. It was something that I actually think they both were at the time of that incident.”

Even though Keselowski got the major brunt of the incident, the clash was viewed by officials as a racing incident. This drew congruence from Ellis as well, who concluded, “That one is really, I think, more of just a racing incident.”

But the question remains: how does NASCAR arrive at a result that quickly and make it so reliable? Well, let's find out.

SMT Telemetry and Throttle Trace Analysis: The Technology Behind NASCAR's Verdict

The Nashville incident made one thing pretty clear. Modern NASCAR relies more upon telemetry than it does on perception. This is made possible through SMT, or SportsMEDIA Technology.

Basically, every car here works as an onboard data-transmitting center that sends crucial vehicle data such as throttle percentage, steering angle, braking inputs, speed, RPM, gear selection, and vehicle position to a central station where it is recorded and evaluated.

The minute Dillon and Keselowski made contact, officials immediately rushed to review this data and found that Dillon had lifted from nearly full throttle exiting Turn 4 to roughly 17% throttle at impact. This showcased that the contact wasn't intentional.

Rather than relying on video evidence, NASCAR now finds it quite reliable to make its decisions on math. And so far, it seems to be working.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason