Patent ID: 7612660

Claim:
A pit road display for inclusion in a tachometer of a vehicle, said tachometer including a primary display including an analog faceplate, numbers indicative of engine speeds, and a pointer, and said tachometer further including a secondary display that is in addition to said pointer and numbers, said secondary display comprising: a plurality of lights arranged to be successively illuminated, each of said lights having multiple colors; setpoint establishing means for establishing lower and upper setpoints, and an intermediate setpoint indicative of an optimal engine speed; and controller means for causing said plurality of lights to be successively illuminated at a first color when an engine speed is between the lower and intermediate setpoints, and to be successively illuminated at a second color when said engine speed is between the intermediate and upper setpoints, said illumination being carried out in a progressive manner, as follows; said plurality of lights are dark when the engine speed is below the lower setpoint; above the lower setpoint, a first of the plurality of lights is illuminated at the first color; as the engine speed increases above the lower set point, neighboring ones of the plurality of lights are illuminated at the first color in a progressive sequence until the intermediate set point is reached, all of the lights are illuminated at the first color; upon exceeding the intermediate set point, all of the lights are again dark, followed by illumination of the first of the plurality of lights at the second color and illumination of the neighboring ones of the plurality of lights in the progressive sequence until the upper set point is reached, wherein said upper setpoint represents a pit road speed limit and said intermediate set point represents an optimal pit road speed for a particular raceway.