Avoiding Pit Crew Pitfalls

Ready, set, go into the world of racing

Reprinted with permission: The AWS Welding Journal

By Ben Cook with Adam Merrell

BEN COOK is the director of programming and PCU recruiting, and ADAM MERRELL is the director of pit crew performance at Pit Instruction & Training (PIT), Mooresville, N.C.

Racing performance among tech professionals has always centered on the mechanics of the racing machine. The machine represents a culmination of skills and technological masteries that can challenge the physics of material, motion, and speed. Although a marvel, the machine alone without the human element is just potential energy with a fancy of kinetic dreams. Racetrack performance is a marriage of machine and human that expands human imaginations with the potential for power and speed. This article puts the pedal to the metal on various factors, from human performance on the racetrack to educating pit crews, and includes an informative Q&A.

Driving Home the Human Element

With their safety and lives in the balance, drivers have always taken the lion’s share of racetrack glory — and rightfully so — but all human performance at the track impacts the machine’s potential.

In NASCAR, drivers, crew chiefs, mechanics, engineers, engine tuners, tire specialists, spotters, support staff, and pit crews must all perform their best to keep their racing machine at the front of the field in winning potential. Standardization of technology and rule enforcements have made the cars in NASCAR very good for its style of racing. Five hundred miles of three cars wide, on 30 deg of banking, bumper to bumper, fender to fender, at speeds of nearly 200 miles/h, and these cars endure. The racing machines in the series have become dependable and durable, so with cars breaking less often, the performance spotlight shifts to examine what can result in lost performance (hence, the human element).

On the Fast Track to Training

In the area of pit crew performance, Pit Instruction & Training (PIT) (visitpit.com) in Mooresville, N.C., has sought to improve the human element through its championship-producing Pit Crew U and 5 Off 5 On pit crew skills training programs.

In addition, the institution offers welding and fabrication courses (visitpit.com/pit-weld-u) as well as American Welding Society welder testing through its Weld U program.

PIT has been a provider of pit crew talent for NASCAR teams for the past 20 years (see lead photo), racing nearly 70% of its 860 alumni in one or more of NASCAR’s top three series. Not only has the institution been a provider of pit crew bodies at the track, but it has also been a producer of championship performances, with PIT alumni taking part in the spraying of champagne in the winners circle (a celebratory tradition after winning a race) nearly every year since PIT’s program began.

Be a Passenger to This Q&A Series

During a conversation, Director of Pit Crew Performance Adam Merrell gave a glimpse of PIT’s training philosophy and how it has benefited performance outcome.

Q: Can you describe the typical NASCAR pit crew by position?

Merrell: We have five total positions that service a NASCAR stock car during a pit stop — two changers, one tire carrier, one jack person, and one fueler.

• Changers are responsible for removing and installing NASCAR’s five lug nuts on both the right and left sides of the car. They pull their own tire off the car’s hub, and depending on the stop, the front changer might have to get the front right-side tire safely back to the wall.

• During a four-tire pit stop, a tire carrier is responsible for bringing and throwing on both the right rear and left front tires (110–180 lb of total tire/wheel weight). They also must perform all right-side mechanical adjustments, add or remove tape from the nose, and clean the car’s grille.

• A jack person is responsible for jacking up both the right and left side of the car so that tires can be exchanged. They make mechanical adjustments on the car’s left and throw on both the right front and left rear tires.

• A fueler is responsible for filling the car with either one or two cans of fuel (100+ lb each).

Q: How is the pit crew program at PIT structured for best performance retention?

Merrell: One of the best qualities about PIT’s pit crew program is we start with the basics, not only in each position but also with every scenario a pit crew might see at the track.

For example, if a tire changer cannot flawlessly do a “tap drill” (this is using an airless impact wrench to tap lug nuts for an assigned number), then there is no reason to increase difficulty by adding air to the drill.

During a pit stop, if a developing pit crew cannot pit the right side of the car with flawless fundamentals — meaning no missed jacking, lug nuts, thrown tires, and adjustments — then there is no reason to travel to the car’s left side for a four-tire pit stop. If you are making mistakes on the car’s right side, then you will undoubtedly compound the problem by doing it on the left.

At PIT, we preach “practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent.” If you are repeatedly practicing poor technique, you will instill those mistakes into your development for days, months, and possibly years, making it hard to undo. We try to prevent our players from ever going down that road of needing retraining.

We believe this has helped our PIT athletes with successfully being placed on top tier NASCAR Cup teams. When you try out for a Cup team, they expect athletes to already know the basics, be able to repeat fundamentals, and do all of this in an efficient amount of time. They are not looking to hire someone so that they can teach them how to change, carrier, jack, or fuel the car. They want people who come in the door ready to go.

NASCAR teams always rate an athlete by pit stop time and average. We teach our crews that saving time requires attention to detail. Make sure you are performing your job safely, then make sure you are not making mistakes, and if you continue to do both objectives consistently, time will take care of itself.

 Q: Which is a more critical part of the training, physical or mental?

Merrell: Like many other sports, in the beginning, the physical components are more critical. The athlete is having to develop a skill that they have never physically performed before. This takes a countless number of reps and is a huge physical stress.

However, once a skill is learned and perfected, throughout their career the player’s mentality becomes a more critical aspect of training. The athlete now knows how to perform the task of pitting a car, and hopefully can consistently perform to near perfection, but generally what gets in the way of perfection is the space between their ears.  Do they have the mental strength to repeatedly perform without mentally checking out? Can they perform at a lower-level racing series, and then when called, jump to a higher level with faster team members around them and repeat the same process? Are they mentally capable of going from being the last place vehicle to coming down pit road in first — knowing that they cannot lose any positions during the stop? And a stressor outside of their control is the knowledge that all the while, people are lined up wanting their job. These occurrences are a constant throughout a pit crew athlete’s career.

We tell our athletes that getting to a top crew is less difficult than staying with a top crew because of the mental discipline required.

Parking Time

 This article presents important insights from a program employing a successful strategy of being mentally disciplined enough to pay attention to the details of the basics. Sounds like a lesson to help all our crews avoid the pitfalls of performance.

Fig 1. PIT’s crews pitting the #68 truck of Clay Greenfield in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.