CONCORD, N.C. - The very nature of progression is that a curve will eventually begin to flatten.
But Hendrick Motorsports hasn’t piled up 14 NASCAR Cup Series championships and 315 wins (and counting) by not being ahead of the curve.
Now, to stay there.
In the fourth season of the Gen 7, single-lug-nut era, the once-rapid improvement of pit stop times has begun to slow. Yet, crews continue to dig for every thousandth of a second, pushing the limits of what is possible in terms of swapping out four tires and filling a tank of fuel.
There’s plenty of statistical data pointing to continued, yet tapering gains on pit road. But with fast stops now clicking in under nine seconds, how much further - and faster - can crews possibly go?
Theories abound.
“I think we’re just scratching the surface, really,” projected Mike Moss, rear-tire changer on the No. 5 Chevrolet. “There’s so much gray area … we’re talking about thousandths of seconds now. So, I think we’ll hit a seven-second stop this year, probably a high seven, like a 7.8 or something like that. But I think the limit will probably be about 7.1 I’d say. Let’s just say a 6.9, how about that?”
Though not all were as confident as Moss when it comes to the margin, across the board, crewmen on all four of Hendrick Motorsports’ teams agreed that continued tweaking and experimentation should lead to further strides.
“In your mind, you kind of think that there’s a limit, but you just keep pushing and scratching to find tenths, half-of-tenths of a second,” said TJ Semke, jackman for the No. 9 team. “A week ago, we ran a 7.64 in practice and in your head, you think, ‘Well, that’s probably about tapped out.” But then you think, ‘We could have done a faster right side, we could have done a faster left side, if we’d only pieced this and this together.’ It’s hard to fathom for a lot of people what a tenth is and how hard it is to find a lot of times but that becomes the passion as you get into this. You get hungry, you get greedy, you watch film over and over and practice so hard just to find a tenth. It’s fun to chase after that. It’s fun to find. And we’re always looking.”
So, how hard really is a tenth of a second to find? And how much could a tenth of a second on pit road really mean?
Our friends from Racing Insights provided some data from every points-paying race in the Next Gen era(2022-present) except for events on the Bristol Dirt Track in 2022 and 2023 in which competitive pit stops were not allowed. And two things were immediately apparent - the continued march forward is still in progress and the margins between crews on pit road continue to tighten.
For instance, the average time of the best pit stop in each race in 2022 was 10.2219 seconds. In 2023 it was 9.858. Last year, it fell again to 9.5797. And through 11 races in 2025 (the data was collected before last Sunday’s race at Kansas Speedway), that number was up a tick to 9.5836 seconds from 2024, yet as a whole was still ahead of pace. The average fastest pit stop in 2024 through the first 11 races of the year was 9.774 seconds.
A similar story is told when looking at the teams who established the fastest average time through each event in the same time period. In 2022, that number was 11.1606 seconds, declining to 10.6146 in 2023 and 10.3224 in 2024. Prior to Kansas this year, the best average pit stop per race was at 10.3377 seconds, but over three tenths of a second better from the first 11 races of 2024 (10.693 seconds).
In short, it’s a simple story for NASCAR Cup Series pit crews these days – get better or get left behind. And in that effort, there’s no shortage of ideas and little teams won’t try to find an edge.
“Our guys come up with stuff. They try stuff and we will talk through it in practice and we’ll try different techniques here and there and if it works, great,” Jacob Claborn, head pit coach at Hendrick Motorsports, said. “If it doesn’t, we can it and move on.
“For example, there’s a specific way that one of our jackmen started dropping the right side of the car and getting to the left side of the car and we found speed in that and other guys have picked that up. Just little things here and there. So, there’s definitely always going to be room to grow with it. It’s going to come down to the consistency of doing it every single time.”
Therein lies the rub: It’s one thing to rip off a fast pit stop. It’s another to do it time and time again, which is the demand of Next Gen racing.
And, just where are the gains going to come from? The answer to that question is what has crew chiefs, pit coaches and crewmen digging each day. And again, theories vary.
“I think the biggest thing is going to be the right sides,” Moss said. “Right now, on average the right sides are between three (seconds) to a 3.4. If we can consistently get them below that … it’s hard to run a 2.8 right side, everybody has to execute, but if we can continue to be consistent, once we get to 2.7, 2.8 right sides the left side is the easy part.”
It’s hard to imagine any easy part existing. The truth is, never before has the spotlight shone so brightly on pit crews as in the current, Next Gen era. On-track passing has never been more difficult, putting further onus on limiting mistakes on pit road. Add to that ever quickening four-tire stops and a continued narrowing of the margin between the best crews and the worst and any, tiny mishap could be devastating to the entire day of a race team.
Moss was once a collegiate athlete, playing basketball for three years at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana before transferring to play a season of football at Robert Morris. It’s a path taken by many in the business who eventually land on NASCAR pit crews and along with athleticism, a life spent in the throes of competition forges competitiveness and grit.
Then there's the ability to shoulder the immense pressure that comes with the pursuit and demand of perfection. Ask a Hendrick Motorsports crew member about pressure and he'll likely dismiss it, citing that, "pressure is a privilege".
But it's there, nonetheless. And it's something Hendrick Motorsports crewmen must face head on with every trip to the race track and with every leap over the wall.
“There’s a heightened pressure but that’s what we signed up for,” John Gianninoto, fueler for the No. 9 squad said. “If you don’t have that pressure it probably means the stop doesn’t matter. We’re looking forward to when it comes to crunch time and we’re trying to get that win and we have to beat that other team out.”
“Everyone handles pressure in their own way,” Semke added. “A lot of times, pressure makes you perform and having those nerves, that pressure and that weight, I think, is a good way to work harder, hone your skills and keep pushing. People want to be where you’re at. It’s an honor to hold this position as long as we’ve had it.”
Semke and Gianninoto are part of a No. 9 squad that has remained largely intact since 2018. That longevity and familiarity is certainly an advantage, especially when it comes to teamwork in conditions in which verbal communication is often impossible amid the roar of engines. And with five bodies in motion in close quarters while slinging tires, jacks and heavy fuel cans, developing a sense for one another's movements is huge not only in the quest for time, but in terms of safety as well.
Still, Gianninoto said fine tuning continues, even for a group as tenured as the 9 crew.
"We're still learning with each other, which is funny since we’ve been with each other so long," Gianninoto said. "We’re all learning how our bodies mingle with each other, where I can get more room where you can get more room, where you can take more space to make your job a bit faster. That’s really what we’ve been focusing on: How we can mesh together to take advantage of all of our body types and if one guy can get in the hub faster than the other, can he give more room when he gets the tire out, so we get the tire back in?"
To that point, Ryan Patton, tire carrier for the No. 24 car, also said taking each other's movements into account is a key to continuing to find more speed in stops.
"At some point, I think it may plateau, but as of right now we're still searching for those tenths here or there," Patton said. "It's not just like, 'How can I be better at my particular task?' It's, 'OK, how can I set up the guy working beside me?' How can I make sure that on the right side of the car, I'm placing the right front tire in the right spot for (jackman) Spencer (Bishop)) to be able to grab it most efficiently and quickly to put the right-front tire on? Where am I at as I'm running across the front of the pit box so Jeff (Cordero), my front changer, can see the car better so he can pick it up faster to anticipate where (driver William Byron is) going to stop? All while I need to be on time in the right rear.
"I think that's one thing that as you look at times people don't really think about is, they see our names like up on the marquee and they'll watch the pit stop competition and they're going to put our name up on a graphic, but it's not just that. It's all of the guys even down to the engineers, the guys that set up the car ... every person has a hand in like a fast pit stop. So, if you can get all those things to click, then yeah, in the right magic potion, you'll see those high sevens, low-eight-second pit stops."
At least, at some circuits. Stop times are also directly affected by the track. Referring back to the graph, pit stops spike at drafting tracks, which are often home to fuel-mileage races in the Next Gen era. Now with the single lug nut and three-plus years of reps, it takes longer to fill a car with gas than it does to change four tires, meaning drivers are waiting on fuelers to pack it as full as humanly possible.
Often, road course races can become mileage wars as well. So, there's an adaptability required among crew members as well and maybe more so for fuelers, than anyone.
“We used to be aiming for two-and-a-half, three seconds on our exchanges and now they want them at two seconds or below and it’s like, you’ve got to cover that same amount of ground with the same amount of fuel,” Jacob Conley, fueler on the No. 48 Chevrolet explained. “The can hasn’t gotten any lighter, so it’s you trying to cover more ground. For me, it’s just that emphasis on perfection. The car comes in and you’ve got to hit it. Everything has to go your way.
“That’s especially true on the intermediate tracks. Our guys were fast at the end of last year and I don’t anticipate them checking up. When we get to Atlanta (Motor Speedway), Daytona (International Speedway) or COTA, those will be fuel-heavy races so they’re waiting on me. But when we go into a Phoenix (Raceway) or Las Vegas (Motor Speedway) where they’re going to want to go fast, that’s when the job really picks up. Our guys are running nine flats to sub-nine-second pit stops and you’re trying to get as much fuel in as you can, so, that’s when the stress really picks up because I’m just out there trying to do the best I can.”
“The terms, ‘family’ and ‘brotherhood’ get thrown around so loosely that I don’t think people really understand the gravity of those words,” Patton concluded. “At any time, I can have a hard or good conversation with anybody on my team, and they know it’s because I care about them and vice versa. I think teams want that and they emulate that. That’s one of the things about our team that makes it so special.
“And we can’t force people to be like that, that’s who they are. That’s in their DNA. Our team over the last few years has gotten closer and closer … It’s not just nuts and bolts that make the car better, that make pit stops better. It’s those extra things. I think we pride ourselves in that each and every week.
“We know that at Hendrick Motorsports, when we show up at the race track we’ve got a chance to win. So, I don’t think you ever get a break from feeling that pressure. But we condition ourselves all year, even out on the practice pad, to be as perfect as possible so that way, when we get to the race track, we’re ready to go. There’s no surprises. It’s not a switch that you can turn on and off, it’s all the time. I think that’s what makes the good teams, good and the great teams, great.”