The closest race

If Logan Gomez and Alex Lloyd raced anything besides Indy Pro Series cars, their close finish at Chicagoland Speedway on Sept. 9 might have been ruled a dead heat.

Gomez beat Lloyd to the finish line by 0.0005 of a second – about 1.65 inches at 188 mph – to win the Chicagoland 100 in the closest finish in Indy Racing League history.

Fortunately, the Indy Racing League added a fourth decimal point to its Timing & Scoring application in 2001, becoming the only motorsports sanctioning body in the world to score to ten-thousandths of a second. A high-speed camera supports the system by taking pictures of the start/finish line every ten-thousandth of a second.
Other major forms of motorsports, including Formula One, NASCAR and NHRA score to three decimal points. Racing disciplines such as horse racing and Olympic sports such as swimming, speed skating and track and field all score to just two decimal places.

Time by the numbers (in seconds)
0.0005 – Logan Gomez's margin of victory over Alex Lloyd in Sunday's Indy Pro Series Chicagoland 100.

0.002 – Closest finish in NASCAR Nextel Cup history (Ricky Craven over Kurt Busch at Darlington in 2003).

0.0170 – Previous closest finish in Indy Pro Series history (Mark Taylor over Ed Carpenter at Chicagoland in 2003).

0.010 – Closest finish in Formula One history (Peter Gethin over Ronnie Peterson at Monza in 1971).

0.01 – Time of a hummingbird's wing beat.

0.1 – Average time to blink an eye.