diff --git a/lucene/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/lucene/store/MockDirectoryWrapper.java b/lucene/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/lucene/store/MockDirectoryWrapper.java
index 26e2d494096..2acb9c7eecf 100644
--- a/lucene/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/lucene/store/MockDirectoryWrapper.java
+++ b/lucene/test-framework/src/java/org/apache/lucene/store/MockDirectoryWrapper.java
@@ -449,7 +449,7 @@ public class MockDirectoryWrapper extends BaseDirectoryWrapper {
     
     // throttling REALLY slows down tests, so don't do it very often for SOMETIMES.
     if (throttling == Throttling.ALWAYS || 
-        (throttling == Throttling.SOMETIMES && randomState.nextInt(50) == 0)) {
+        (throttling == Throttling.SOMETIMES && rateLimiter == null && randomState.nextInt(50) == 0)) {
       if (LuceneTestCase.VERBOSE) {
         System.out.println("MockDirectoryWrapper: throttling indexOutput");
       }