CONCORD, N.C. - A modern-day pit stop in the NASCAR Cup Series is truly poetry in motion.
But in the single-lug-nut, Next Gen era, if you blink, you could miss it.
With stops approaching the eight-second-flat range, the choreographed, five-man waltz performed by over-the-wall crews is much more intricate than initially meets the eye.
Unless of course, it's slowed down. Way down.
Kind of like this:
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Still, lost in the midst of a green flag run or buried amid a busy pit road during a caution flag, the individual movements and execution displayed by each crew member for each team can be lost.
So, we gathered a Hendrick Motorsports crewman from each of the five positions and representing all four teams to walk us through their thought processes and movements, step-by-step, from inside their helmets.
Spoiler alert: The amount of time it took them to explain far exceeded the amount of time of the stops themselves.
Without further ado:
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TJ Semke, jackman, No. 9 team
“First and foremost, practicing as much as we do throughout the week, really hoping to get the muscle memory down to where I’m not out there thinking, I’m just reacting. Before I jump off the wall, I like to know I had a great week of prep and I'm feeling confident jumping out onto pit road. The worst thing that hurts a lot of teams is when one guy is lacking confidence going over the wall. If you don’t have confidence, you’re already in a bad position.
“As I go out to the right side of the car I’m trying to get the car up as fast as I can, well under a second – about six tenths – that’s my goal from when the car stops to when the car is off the ground. Then, I want to help the tire changers get started sooner to pull the tires off faster. Then I’m trying to get to the right-front tire as fast as I can to get on the right-front hub and drop the jack. One thing with this top, there’s not a lot of time for a jackman. There’s no pauses. With the five lug, we had time before each movement. This is just a faster stop and so much more fluid. I don’t want to be the guy anyone is waiting on.
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“Dropping the car fast on the right side is always an important piece for me. I need to do it fast and accurately as soon as the guys are done putting the lug on then dropping the car and bolting to the left side as fast as possible to get the car up again so they’re not waiting for me to pull the tires off.
“As a jackman, we’re kind of managing the entire stop and kind of can make or break you. Ultimately, you’re the one that’s going to be the hero for dropping the car on time or the zero looking at a two-week suspension if a tire isn’t secured. It can’t be understated how difficult that is and how much pressure that is but it helps being alongside solid teammates and knowing what they’re doing and trusting in them.”
John Gianninoto, fueler, No. 9 team
“Our jackman, TJ, does a great job marking the box and making sure we have the sign where we need it depending on if there’s a car in front of us or behind us, whether we’re going to stop short or long, all that stuff. From there, it’s just communication with each other. We have a lot of hand gestures because it’s so loud at the track. Especially as a fueler, me and the rear changer, we have to communicate really well because he has to know what I’m doing fuel wise and that changes what his job is going to be. Am I going to be out of the way? Is he going to have to go underneath me? Is he going to have to check up? All that kind of stuff.
“The first thing we have to do is make sure our communication is checked off so we know what the stop is and from there, it’s a ballet we try to put together just making sure it’s cohesive and it runs well.”
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Mike Moss, rear-tire changer, No. 5 team
“It starts with the crew chief; he’s giving the call that the car is 10 stalls away. From there, I take a deep breath, and you just feel light. As the car enters the next box, that’s when we can jump off the wall. I jump off the wall and I like touching the left side of the car, just feeling the speed of it and I try to get to the right side of the car within three seconds. I engage the lug nut and push the tire off. As I’m setting the tire, my tire carrier, Allen Stallings, is indexing the tire.
"And then my most important job is to make sure the lug nut is on there completely. As I see that - I have stripes on my gun that’s an indicator of how tight the nut is - I get up, approach the left side, do my runaround, engage the left-side lug nut and do the same thing over there but now the jackman is indexing the tire. Then, I just make sure the tire is tight.”
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Donnie Tasser, front-tire changer, No. 48 team
“It starts with your mindset. Breath-work I think is important, or however guys get into the zone so to speak. So, when the car gets one spot away, I take a slow, deep breath and that’s my trigger.”
The car is coming in. As the front-tire changer, the jackman and tire carrier are coming off the wall in front of me. I’m finding my own line of sight. I’m trying to get that right-front lug engagement as quick as possible so, as the car is coming up, I can be pulling the tire and sending it to the wall. Then zip it back up and get out of the way so that my jackman can haul around the car, enter the left front and do it again. As soon as we finish the left front, I’m looking at the jack because in some situations, I end up dropping that. Making sure that when the left-rear is done if (jackman Allen Holman) is not back at the jack yet, I’m moving toward it so we can save any amount of time that we can.”
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Ryan Patton, tire carrier, No. 24 team
“So, for me as the tire carrier, and this has been instilled in me for years, I’m kind of like the voice of the team. I don’t want to say, ‘captain’, but that might be the best terminology. So, the car is on the track running and (driver) William (Byron) is giving feedback and relaying that to (crew chief) Rudy (Fugle. Rudy gets a plan of how we’re going to make this car run a little bit better – could be an adjustment, could be no adjustment – and then Tyler Jones, our car chief, relays that to me. We all hear it on the radio but I specifically go to every member of the team and tell them, ‘This is what we’re doing.’
“We hear the cue and (jackman) Spencer (Bishop) picks up the jack, I pick up the tires and we get ready to roll. Once the car approaches, we leave and kind of form a flying ‘V’ in front of the race car with Spencer and myself being the peak. I pick up my visuals out of the race car and out of my peripherals kind of get a feel of where Spencer is at, where (front-tire changer) Jeff (Cordero) is at so that way, when I drop off the right front, that’s not impeding their performance. Then go to the right rear, make sure I get a good hang for (rear-tire changer) Orane (Ossowski) so he can have a quick change.
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“If we make an adjustment, make sure we get that taken care of and then just haul to the left front. So, we kind of retrace our steps back around the front of the race car and then put the left-front tire on. So, once the right side is done, I don’t want to say you can take a breath, but you can kind of feel the pace of the stop. Like, ‘Hey, we’ve got a good one going here. If we can just be clean on the left side, we should have a good one.’ And then, once the car drops, you kind of have a feel like, ‘Hey, that was pretty good.’”