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During the race, pit road can be a busy place. Under cautions, it’s not uncommon for 30 or more cars to hit pit road for service. When that happens, teams are at the mercy of those around them in regard to how they can get in and out of their pit stall. But during green flag pit stops, crew chiefs actually work together to give their drivers the best chance of getting on and off pit road quickly. By coordinating with their neighbors on when they come in for service, crew chiefs can ensure their drivers have a clean shot in and out of their pit stall.
What you often hear about, is crew chiefs coordinating with each other during superspeedway races like we just had at Talladega. In those cases, they are usually trying to work out drafting deals and figure out when they can come to pit road with their partners. But this type of collaboration isn’t just limited to Daytona and Talladega. It actually happens almost every week.
Once you are aware of what is going on, these interactions between rival crew chiefs can be interesting to witness. In the days of advanced technology with computers and digital radios, guys are usually reduced to yelling, hand signals, and sending runners from pit box to pit box.
Since the teams aren’t wired together, and with noise being an obstacle, the first challenge is getting your neighbor’s attention. From there, the goal is to figure out when the cars to your left and right are coming to pit road so you can come the lap before or after. By working together to stagger pit stops, everybody gets the best possible chance to gain or maintain track position.
It’s the little intricacies like this that make racing truly interesting. When I talk to new race fans, and those attending races for the first time, they often say that they didn’t realize how complex and involved it all was. The quote is usually something like “I just thought it was guys going in circles.” Those of us in the sport and the educated race fan know different. These interactions between rival crew chiefs are a small, but vital aspect to giving a driver the best possible chance to win.
Seven races into the season and all those questions we got in the off-season are starting to be answered, namely what off-season changes have worked, and in some cases haven’t so far in 2011.
One of the biggest changes that came after Homestead last season (and the topic for this particular follow up) was the crew chief swap at Hendrick Motorsports. Alan Gustafson was moved from the #5 to the #24; Lance McGrew was moved from the #88 to the #5, and Steve Letarte was moved from the #24 to the #88. And the results so far? Well, it’s a mixed bag.
After struggling through much of last season, Mark Martin’s fortunes have not turned around with new crew chief Lance McGrew. Through the first seven races of last season Martin averaged a finish of 16.1 including three top-fives – this year, he’s averaging 17th place finish with just two top-ten finishes. He finds himself 15th in points.
How about Jeff Gordon? He was able to finally overcome that winless streak and head to victory lane at Phoenix, but he’s had some struggles elsewhere. A wreck at Las Vegas and sub-20th place finishes at Texas and Daytona have pushed Gordon’s average finish to 17.9 – compare that to an average finish of 12.2 after the first seven races of last season. In points, he sits next to teammate Mark Martin in 14th.
The biggest winner of this shift appears to be Dale Earnhardt Jr. who struggled through his first three seasons at Hendrick with crew chiefs Tony Eury Jr., and Lance McGrew. With Steve Letarte at the helm Junior hasn’t finished worse than 12th since Daytona and was in position to win at Martinsville. With an average finish of 10.9 he sits sixth in the points right now. Not too shabby for a guy who, just a few short months ago, finished an abysmal 21st in points. Consider though through the first seven last year he was averaging a 14th place finish and sat 10th in the points. Can his strong start be maintained?
With 29 races still remaining in the season there is a ton of time for the slow starters to start making some headway. Still it’s interesting to see where they stand right now. What do you think of the swap? Has it been a success? A flop? Talk amongst yourselves.
As we get ready to head to Talladega this weekend, pit crew coaches across the sport will spend the week preaching to their crews about the importance of not making mistakes. Even if it means pit stops take a few extra seconds than normal, it’s more important to get things right, than it is to have quick stops. Why? Because pit stops in the new era of superspeedway racing really don’t matter.
In a world where races often have multiple leaders per lap, the importance of track position has been lowered. Cars can go from the back to the front, or front to the back, very quickly. Having blazing fast pit stops and picking up spots on pit road is really not worth the risk of possibly having dropped lugnuts, loose wheels, and other mistakes. Obviously crew chiefs don’t want slow stops, but there is less of a focus on being quick, and more of a focus on being mistake free.
Besides the nature of the racing, another reason why pit stops mean less has to do with the tires. Now that both Daytona and Talladega have new surfaces, tire wear over the course of a race has become a non-issue. Some even said that it may have been possible to run the entire Daytona 500 on one set of tires! In any case, crew chiefs want to spend the least amount of time on pit road possible, and if they don’t need to take tires, they won’t. At Daytona in February, this led to a lot of fuel only and two tire pit stops.
Something else to keep in mind when watching pit stops this weekend, is that some teams will set the cars up to maximize speed on track, and in turn sacrifice speed on pit road. What I am referring to specifically is the shock package that some teams use. We’ve seen in the past that the front tire changers and carriers will struggle with the right front. When the car is jacked up, the shock won’t bleed down and it causes the right front tire to stay up in the fender. It makes it very difficult for the changers to get the old tire off, and for the carriers to get the new tire in. Not every team has this problem, but it can significantly slow down pit stops for the teams that do.
Like I’ve said here before, races can’t necessarily be won on pit road, but they can certainly be lost there. This weekend, crews will be doing everything possible to ensure the race is decided on the track and not on pit road.
I didn’t have one idea that I wanted to focus on with my last blog post before the 2011 season gets under way this week, so instead I’ve got a bunch of mini topics to touch on. Feel free to comment on any or all of them.
New Points System I’ve been asked by a few people what my opinion is of the new points system NASCAR has instituted for this season, and I’ve got to say, I don’t really care. It seems on initial inspection that it isn’t a ton different then the old system, and I really don’t believe it will change the way teams race. Teams will still try like hell to win races, and when they can’t, they will do whatever is necessary to get the best possible finish they can. You will also still see teams try and get their race cars back on track after a wreck in order to ride around and get as many points as they can. The mindset won’t change. So I guess if the new system makes things easier for the fans, cool, but other than that, I don’t care.
Final Pit Procedure Thoughts We’ve talked quite a bit around here about the new pit road procedures with the elimination of the catch can position, but I just wanted to offer a few final points. I encourage you to really pay attention to pit stops at Daytona, because you will definitely see some differing techniques among the teams. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it appears as though one or two teams use a system that works better than the others, and for the other teams to follow suit shortly. It will be kind of a “monkey see, monkey do” situation once the teams get a chance to scout each other. These changes will also have a significant impact on pit strategy and what adjustments will get made. It’s a whole new ball game for crew chiefs and engineers now, and I think there is a much larger emphasis now on the decisions they make during the races. You will see a lot more races decided based on pit strategies – at least in the short run.
Important Season For Many Drivers, Teams, and Sponsors There are quite a few drivers and sponsors this season that have contracts that will be expiring after Homestead in November. Lee Spencer from FoxSports.com recently had a bit up about all the Cup drivers who are in the final year of their contracts in 2011 (see it here). This really could be a year that we look back on and say that this was the year that made or broke driver X or team Y. There will be a lot of pressure on those drivers and teams to put in solid performances every week in order to help secure their futures. With the economy continuing to a be a big factor with sponsorships, these teams don’t want to give these companies any reason to either switch to another race team, or pull out completely. It will certainly be an interesting story line to watch.
Nationwide Series Changes I’m really curious to see how the 2011 season unfolds for the Nationwide Series after the championship eligibility changes were made. Will it really help bring the series back to being a developmental series, or will the Cup drivers continue to dominate regardless? We haven’t had a solid Cup rookie class in a couple of years, and the deterioration of the Nationwide Series has certainly played a part in that. In order to keep the talent coffers full of new young drivers, it’s vital that the NNS get back to being a place where these kids can learn how to race.
Championship Predictions We don’t normally do a ton of predictions around here, because they are mostly useless, and it’s pretty much impossible to get them right. But with that said, I’m going to give you my picks on who I think will win each of the top three championships. In the Truck Series, I believe the addition of Jeff Hensley to KHI will pay off big and Ron H0rnaday will return to dominance. Hornaday ran really well last season, but just had a lot of bad luck. Expect that to change for 2011. For the Nationwide Series, I think the pick has to be Elliott Sadler. The Joe Gibbs Toyotas are pretty much unstoppable, but since neither Joey Logano nor Kyle Busch can win the championship, the balance shifts towards KHI. Sadler has the talent and will have the equipment to be a contender every week, and I don’t see any of the younger drivers putting it together for 34 races. And finally, the 2011 Cup Series champion will be Denny Hamlin. The bitter taste of being the runner up to Jimmie Johnson in 2010 will be serious motivation for this team to take the next step, and with Hamlin being 100% healthy this season, he will put it together and unseat the 48 bunch.
The off season has ended, and teams will head to Daytona this week. The next time you hear from me, we’ll have our first race winner (even if it is an exhibition race), and the front row will be set for the Daytona 500. Welcome to 2011!
There is no question that in order to have success in racing, a team needs to have both a great driver and a great crew chief. We are witnessing one such pair right now with Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus. Apart, they are both good enough that they would probably still have success, but together they are seemingly unstoppable. There is no question that the really great drivers are able to do more with less, and there are instances of great crew chiefs making okay drivers look great. But for a team to be considered elite, they need to have both. So my question to you is, what is harder to find, a great driver or a great crew chief?
The success of NASCAR over the last few decades has ensured that there is no shortage of talent coming up on America’s race tracks. Kids are getting into racing at younger ages, and parents are leveraging their own assets to help fund their kids’ dreams. The days of drivers making it to the big leagues on talent alone are probably over, which makes finding the cream of the crop very difficult. Now, unless a driver is bringing funding to the table, most owners won’t even bother.
Finding really great crew chiefs is no simple task either. In today’s NASCAR, crew chiefs aren’t head mechanics anymore. They need to know everything there is about the race car, be able to effectively strategize for every possible outcome of a race, and be somebody who others will follow. Crew chiefs also need to serve as a cheerleader for their driver and make effective personnel decisions. In order to find the best guy for the job, owners will search high and low both inside and outside of their own organizations. He may come from the engineering department with a great resume, or he could be the young kid sweeping the floors. We’ve literally seen it all.
So knowing what we know about both drivers and crew chiefs, which is more difficult to find? That great steering wheel holder, or the guy he yells at on the radio?
As a tire changer I have basically two jobs: take the lugnuts off and put the lugnuts on. Sounds simple enough right? Well don’t forget that during a pit stop there are 20 lugnuts to hit, that is 10 off and 10 back on. So in essence, that’s 20 chances to screw up. And trust me, there are a lot of ways to screw it up.
At Bristol, even though Jamie McMurray finished third, it was a tough night for his guys. After one round of pit stops under caution, McMurray had to bring his car back to pit road because the rear changer knocked off lugnuts. Meet tire changer deadly sin number one. When a new tire gets hung on the hub, the lugnuts sit on the end of the studs and wait for us to come back and tighten them up. On your way to getting them tight quickly, it only takes a small miss to knock one off. And sometimes the jackman is paying attention and sees you knock one off, so you can fix it without coming back to pit road. There are plenty of cases though, where a changer knocks one off, the official sees it, and the jackman sends the car. The team has just bought their driver a return trip to pit road. These situations aren’t exactly conducive to job security.
What’s interesting to note though, is that there are actually a lot of cases where a lugnut gets knocked off but the official doesn’t see it, and the car heads back to the race with only four. Things happen so quickly during a stop, that if a changer knocks one off, but is a good actor, the official won’t notice. Often times the official only knows a lug is missing because the changer was fumbling around.
The next deadly sin will also ruin a race for a team, and could cost the changer his job. This sin is usually predicated by a short radio message that goes like this: “I’ve got a vibration.” Those are words dreaded by every changer on pit road. Why? Because that can mean loose lugnuts. There are a ton of reasons why lugnuts could be left loose or come loose, but in any case, it’s really bad when they do. The vibration comes from the fact that the loose wheel is now wobbling on the hub, destroying both the wheel and the studs. And every changer has had those pit stops in his career where when he got done, he said a little prayer and thought “wow, I hope those are tight.” You then spend the next 60 laps praying that the car makes it to the next pit stop without hearing that dreaded message.
The other two sins I will mention here will kill pit stop times, but unless they are repeated over and over, probably won’t completely ruin a race. They are hanging lugnuts, and hitting more then 20 during a stop.
Hanging lugnuts means you hit all five off, but for whatever reason, one (or more) doesn’t come all the way off the stud. It’s a horrible feeling to grab a hold of the wheel to pull it off, only to be jarred by a stuck lugnut that won’t allow the wheel to come off. The next course of action is to either pick the gun back up and hit the offending nut off, or try and spin it with your fingers. And we will call attempting to spin the lug with your fingers deadly sin 3-B. Crew chiefs and pit crew coaches alike will chew some ass over that tactic because sometimes the lugnut might be stuck and your fingers aren’t strong enough to spin it off. Or maybe it took 10 turns to get the lug off. Either way, you just killed the stop.
In practices and at the races, we are always told to “just hit 20.” Only hitting 20 lugnuts is what we all strive for. Sometimes though, that just doesn’t happen. Instead of hitting five, it’s not uncommon for a changer to hit six, or seven, or eight off. There are again a million reasons why this could happen, but every extra hit means the pit stop is longer by two to three tenths of a second. So if I miss one time during each pattern, that’s four extra hits for the whole stop, which just cost my team one second in the pits.
These are all deadly sins because if done enough, they will all lead to a changers demise. And trust me, having to explain why you just screwed up a race is not exactly a fun conversation. No race can ever be won in the pits, but it certainly can be lost.
With some of the recent incidents we’ve seen with cheating, namely the Front Row/bleeder valve situation, an interesting dilemma was brought up to me by Journo. Before I get into it, I just want to say that this is completely hypothetical. I can’t say I’ve ever actually heard of this happening. Anyway, back to the dilemma. Lets say for instance that you work for a race team. Your crew chief comes to you and says I need you to do something to the car that isn’t exactly within the rules. He knows you may be uncomfortable doing it, so he lets you know in so many words that if you don’t do what he’s asking, you might be looking for a new job. So what do you do? Cheat, or get fired?
In racing, there is always a ton at stake. For guys near the top, there is always that pressure to push through and win races and championships. At the other end, some teams are just trying to make races. In either case, this pressure can make people do crazy things. We’ve seen really blatant cheating like bleeder valves and jet fuel, all the way to small cheating, like slightly off bodies and re-arranged weight. Some are even of the mind that “if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t trying.”
It seems that the idea of cheating in sports has been a major issue over the last five years or so. And what pushed it to the forefront was the use of performance enhancing drugs by those in traditional sports. Cheating however, is nothing new in NASCAR. Guys have been working in those “gray areas” ever since the first cars took to the track. Some of the best stories are those of Smokey Yunick and his “innovations.”
Coming back though to my original point, what would you do? Do you cheat like your crew chief wants, or risk losing your job?
I’m going to throw another wrench into this problem. What if there is a good chance the team could get caught, and they make you the scapegoat? We’ve seen it happen where the team as a whole was “unaware” and that some rogue employee was behind the illicit actions. Would that change your decision?
Before I open up the floor, I have one last question for you. When you do see that a team has done something they shouldn’t have, does it bother or disappoint you? Or do you just see it as part of the sport? People always seem to have very strong opinions one way or the other about cheating in other sports, and I’m curious if you look at it the same in NASCAR.
Thanks to another Monday race, we’ve got a short week before we head to Talladega. The ARCA cars will take to the 2.66 mile tri-oval on Friday, with the Nationwide Series and Cup Series headlining the weekend. While the teams make last minute preparations, we’ve got more questions and answers for you. If you don’t know what this post is, we answer any and all reader questions every Wednesday, right here. So if you’ve got one, click on the ”Ask the Insiders” tab at the top of the page and send one to us. On to the questions…
1. From Allen:
What do you think of Kasey Kahne moving to Hendrick in 2012 and what do you predict his plans will be for 2011?
We’ll see. Hendrick’s driver performance is pretty hit and miss. Remember Casey Mears and Brian Vickers’ stints with the team? And when was the last time Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. won a race? Check this out, it’s an interesting look at driver performance at Hendrick. He is certainly better positioned now, but there are a lot of factors in play. And if I had to bet, I’d put my money on Stewart-Haas for 2011. – Journo
2. From Paul:
I just read an ‘ask’ question about gear ratios. For ‘Dega and Daytona, why not mandate a gear to keep the speeds down and get rid of the restrictor?
NASCAR actually does have a gear rule at the restrictor plate tracks, to go along with the plate. I think though, that having just a mandated gear would result in the same kind of racing we have now. Everyone would be in a giant pack and passes would be based on aero and momentum. - T.C.
3. From Ike:
What is the fastest anyone has ever gone in the history of NASCAR?
The fastest official, recorded average speed is Bill Elliott’s 1987 qualifying run at Talladega – he went 212 mph. Rusty Wallace went out a few years ago and ran a car in the neighborhood of 230 (top speed) with averages around 220. It wasn’t official though. – Journo
4. From Loren:
They say the new rear deck fin length is adjustable. Can it be adjusted during a race or is the length determined before hand and then can’t be changed?
I’m not 100% sure on this one. I know that NASCAR allows a variance in how long the fin can be, but I don’t know if they’d allow a change to it during the race. If a team did decide to make a change, it would be a very lengthy one to make, as it would require either cutting or replacing the existing setup. – T.C.
5. From Allen:
I’ve noticed this since Daytona, but I’m sure it’s been going on longer: How come the cars do not have the “Official NASCAR Stock Car” logo already on the car when unloaded. I noticed a few weeks ago at Atlanta one car didn’t have it on Friday, but come Sunday it was there. I thought it was painted on, just a sticker?
That sticker is placed on the car after teams successfully make it through the inspection process. Those are NASCAR’s to put on the cars. – Journo
6. From Grover:
During a impound race, what are the teams allowed to change? I assume it is small stuff, tire pressure, tape on the nose, carb jetting, and topping off fluid levels.
It’s pretty much just tire pressure, grill tape, and wedge/trackbar adjustments. Other then those three, there is very little else that NASCAR will allow the teams to mess with. Any carb adjustments and fluid additions would have to be done pre-impound. NASCAR will sometimes make exceptions, but any adjustments have to be approved by NASCAR. – T.C.
7. From Clay:
I was listening to Dave Rogers (Kyle Busch’s Cup Crew Chief I believe) on Sirius Nascar Radio and he was saying that the reason they went with 4 tires at the end of the Phoenix race is that they scanned the other team radios and heard that Chad Knaus was also going with 4 tires. This got me thinking, why don’t the crew chiefs use code names for their pit stops so the competition won’t know who’s doing what on the next pit stop?
It’s unnecessary. Crew chiefs do listen in to other crew chiefs during the race, but the information that gets spewed on the radio isn’t always accurate. If a crew chief wanted to be discreet, it would be as simple as hopping off the box and telling his guys what the stop was going to be. The spotter plays a big role in this too, because he can see what other team’s stops are and pass that information along. – Journo
8. From Paul:
Ok, settle a bet for me. If a driver only completes 250 laps of a 500 lap race but is still running at the end, did he finish the race or only finish half of the race?
If I understand you correctly, it won’t mean that he gets a DNF. He will be shown as finishing the race. He’ll be scored 250 laps down, but he’ll finish. Hope that helps! – Journo
9. From Lost In Texas:
Is it my imagination or does it seem that the Monday races run smoother with less cautions. Is it because everyone just wants to get it over with or what?
It’s your imagination. Monday’s race at Texas actually had more cautions and more caution laps than the previous four races at Texas. And the Martinsville race earlier in the year was right in line with the recent races there. – T.C.
And that brings yet another “Ask The Insiders Wednesday” to a close. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. And remember, if you’d like to be a part of next week, click on the ”Ask the Insiders” tab at the top of the page and send your question in!