Much has been made over the record setting win by Kyle Larson. At Kansas Motor Speedway on May 5…and not all of it positive.

Initially at the end of the race the FOX Sports broadcast crew reported that there was a 0.000 second difference between Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher.  A few moments later NASCAR stated that the difference was actually 0.001 seconds with Larson winning the race.

Many comments have been made about the finish line painted on the track, but that is not how NASCAR determines the race results. NASCAR has a high-speed camera that is used for determining race results, running order, and even who gets off of pit road first.

The very same high-speed camera technology was used the previous day to determine the winner at the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.

Widely used in motorsports, the software used with the line scan photo finish camera is called FinishLynx and employed a composite of thousands of tiny, vertical image slices from the start/finish line to determine the winner.

The camera is always on and is triggered by a motion sensor.  It then captures thousands of images per second to create the “photo finish” used to determine the winner.

A number of comments have been made on social speaking to the perceived lack of quality of the camera shot.

The start/ finish line camera is placed in an unused pit stall, some distance away from the action on the track.  That coupled with near dark conditions after rain delayed the start of the race by over two hours, combined to give the photo a somewhat grainy and out of focus appearance.

The FinishLynx system used a laser in its determination of the winner; the painted start/finish line uses no such technology and events during the pre-race and racing itself can alter the look of the start/finish line itself.  Therefore, NASCAR uses the high-speed camera as the determining factor when naming a winner of a race.

Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds when it comes to deciding the winner of a race.  In 1959 it took days for NASCAR days of studying a single still photograph to determine that it was Lee Petty who actually won the race.

Had Larson and Buescher truly end the race in a tie, the tiebreaker would have been which driver led the most laps, which still would have given the win to Larson.