NASCAR's finish-line timing system is confusing — but it works

NASCAR's closest-ever finish — Kyle Larson beat Chris Buescher by 0.001 seconds Sunday at Kansas — has brought scrutiny to how NASCAR determines the winner at the finish line. 

That is good. What's more important is understanding how the NASCAR timing and scoring works.

The fact that Buescher crew chief Scott Graves talked with NASCAR and accepted the explanation shows that no matter how badly he wanted to have evidence to show his driver won the race, he didn't have anything he could rant and rave about. A protest to finishing results has to be made within 20 minutes after the results were posted, and none was made.

But that still doesn't mean NASCAR's process shouldn't be scrutinized and explained.

The hard part is it is confusing, and the technology of high-speed cameras is tough to comprehend.

I tried to explain some of it a couple of months ago here.

...  and show even more of my interview for that story (on a very windy day) here: 

The other difficult thing is that the finish line Sunday at Kansas Speedway was, well, not the most straight line ever painted. That created confusion, too.

But, basically, NASCAR uses the same technology used to determine the winners of horse races, Olympic track-and-field and other major sporting events. 

The camera system uses a laser, razor-thin line and anything that moves past that line activates the high-speed camera, which takes images at several thousand per second and the computer software generates an image in nearly real time of the cars at the time they hit that line.

So the "photo" in the photo finish isn't a photo at all — it's an image that is a compilation of photos. That's why it looks compressed. And at night time with the reflections, it has a slight blur. It also