Toyota/Save Mart 350 - Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island

From 1989 to 2001, the pit road could only accommodate 34 pit stalls. In the early years, some teams were required to share pit stalls while other teams were forced to pit inside the garage area. When cars dropped out of the race, their pit stalls were reassigned to cars who were sharing.

After a few years, a makeshift auxiliary pit road was constructed inside the hairpin (turn 11) nicknamed Gilligan's Island. Cars that had the nine slowest qualifying speeds were relegated to these pit stalls. Pitting in this area was considered an inconvenience and a competitive disadvantage, more so than even the disadvantages one would experience pitting on the backstretch at a short track at the time.

Since the length of the auxiliary pit road was significantly shorter than the main pit road, the cars that pitted there were held from 15–20 seconds to make up for the time that would have been spent if the cars had traveled the entire main pit road.

Pitting on Gilligan's Island had several other inconveniences. The location (the staging area for drag races) was landlocked by the race course, and crew members were unable to leave once the race began. Teams sent only the primary pit crew to Gilligan's Island, and once they were there, they could not access the garage area or their transporters to collect spare parts/tools. The only repairs that could be made were routine tire changes and refueling, as well as only minor repairs. Other auxiliary pit crew members, who were not part of the main crew, were staged in the garage area, and would have to service the car if it required major repairs. If a team pitting on Gilligan's Island dropped out of the race, the crew was unable to pack up their supplies and prepare to leave (a common practice at other tracks) until the race was over.

Changes to the track in 2002 that included separation of the drag strip from the frontstretch, removal of the main drag strip grandstand, and the new control tower for road racing led to the pit road being expanded by extending pit road into the main straight and moving the pit exit up the hill past Turn 1, thereby expanding it to 43 cars, and Gilligan's Island was abandoned.

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