The 00:14 Second Dance

A yellow caution flag signaled trouble on Florida’s Homestead-Miami Speedway, so NASCAR drivers wheeled their cars into the pit area during the resulting lull in the 400-mile race.

Acclaimed driver Dale Jarrett hung in second place when his seven-man pit crew jumped over the waist-high barrier wall. They changed tires, added gas, and adjusted the car’s aerodynamics—all in 13.7 blistering seconds.

When Jarrett’s number 88 flew back onto the track, he owned first place.

In NASCAR, a pit crew’s performance often means the difference between a checkered flag and finishing in the middle of the pack. Jarrett’s crew, one of the best, is typical of the people who battle to win or lose on pit road (often called pit row).

“You’ve got 14 seconds or less on each stop, and you’ve got to get it right,” says Jeff Knight, who carries and positions the 72-pound rear tires. “It seems we’ve got forever out there, and we don’t even feel rushed because it’s what we drill on.”

But for Knight and the others, it’s more than just competition. They know thousands of fans envy their jobs. They enjoy their role as part of NASCAR’s elite and, maybe most importantly, they know they’re often the difference between winning and losing.

“If you’re not having fun at it, you don’t need to be doing it,” says Knight, 37.

Driver Dale Jarrett and the rest of his team, whose car is sponsored by United Parcel Service, appreciate the effort. “A lot of times, races are won by the team that gets off pit road the best, and last year was a good example of that,” Jarrett says. “Usually whoever was leading with 20 laps to go won the race. The way these cars are now, being so similar, more of a premium has been placed on beating the other teams off pit road.”

Athletes in their own way

The UPS-sponsored team calls Charlotte, N.C., home, and racing isn’t the primary job for most members of the seven-man crew. Instead, they work jobs such as firefighter, salesman, or truck driver. Pay for a season on NASCAR pit crew ranges from $35,000 to $60,000, depending largely on the bonus points won by the team, says Penny Copen, spokeswoman for UPS racing.

During the week, Darren Jolly, 37, drives a truck for UPS. On race day, he slings 68 pounds of rubber and metal around a racecar as the front tire changer.

Jolly grew up playing baseball, but eventually he realized that wouldn’t carry him as far as he hoped so he turned to NASCAR. “This was a chance to do something competitive that was still a professional sport,” he says.

He and his team members train professionally, practicing three days a week for about two hours each. Sessions involve workouts, video review of past performances, and practice of the choreographed dance around the car. “A whole lot is going on in 14 seconds,” Jolly says. “But if everyone worries about his own job first, there’s plenty of time.”

Robert Yates Racing, which owns the car, pays mechanics and others to build engines, fabricate parts, or tweak suspensions for the cars Jarrett races, leaving the pit crew to focus on specific tasks.

Pulling it all together falls to Phillip Horton, a certified athletic trainer and the pit crew coach. He’s a former assistant trainer for the Milwaukee Bucs professional basketball team, and he applies lessons from other sports to the pit crews. “Winning is winning and the way to go about that does not change,” he says. “They have to perform fundamentally sound and make no mistakes.”

But the crew needed to teach him the fundamentals of the sport first. He learned each of the roles, from tire carrier to gas man. Then he translated the skills to other sports.

For example, Horton describes the tire carriers as linebackers. They pack the strength needed to muscle the heavy wheels around the track and the fearlessness to leap in front of racecars braking hard to stop.

A tire changer, who must quickly work a drill to remove and then replace the lugs securing wheels to the car, needs a golfer’s finesse, says Horton, who devised drills specific to each task.

Crew members arrive at the track on race morning and are a visible, integral part of the operation. Jarrett says he works to bolster that feeling.

“It’s not like our crew gets there on Sunday, and that’s the only time they’re around,” he says. “But, from the driver standpoint, it sometimes becomes our role to be a cheerleader, congratulating the guys on a good pit stop, and encouraging them when they have one that isn’t so good.”

‘Like a world in itself’

Race day typically starts with a 3:30 a.m. wakeup call followed by a flight about an hour later on a jet service that transports crews for many teams from Charlotte. They travel to places such as Michigan, Las Vegas, and Homestead, Fla., where the season ends with the Pennzoil 400.

Four hours before the start of a race, John Bryan perks up as the crew members ready the tires and equipment from their spot on pit road. He serves as parts manager for Robert Yates Racing and is one of two pit crew members who works full time for the team.

“I don’t think I could do anything else if it’s not as fast-paced as racing,” says Bryan, the team’s jack man. He’s 32 and hopes to keep up the hectic pace for four or five more years, when he might consider slowing down enough to begin a family.

For now, the challenge of the pits makes the travel and long hours worthwhile. “It’s like a world in itself,” Bryan says. “You start out as good buddies, and then you turn around, and they’re not just buddies. They’re close friends.”

He needs only to look into the stands for a reminder of the thousands of people dreaming of taking his job. “It’s a deal where you look at all of the fans who could pretty much do my job but they just don’t happen to … live in Charlotte, the racing capital of the world,” he says.

NASCAR fans touring pit road and the garage areas at the track snap photos of Bryan and others in their uniforms with the colors and logos of UPS. A few onlookers ask for autographs, one handing over a toy UPS truck for a signature.

In the pits, the crews are part of the spectacle that is NASCAR and fans treat the teams with respect and curiosity.

Jason Sheets, 26, understands. “Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of being a rear tire changer on pit road,” he says.

His father, Don, raced on short tracks in Indiana from 1978 to 1982, and Sheets followed years later. He started working on cars for the Indy Racing League but his thoughts often turned to NASCAR. “To me, it’s more exciting because you can bump and bang a little bit and the cars still keep going,” he says.

He knows thousands of fans feel the same way about the sport and his job.

“My dad was with me one time, and I signed autographs for three hours,” he says. “He said, ‘I never thought I’d see the day when my son would sign autographs.’”

In the end, though, winning matters most, and crew members know they make a difference. Crews from the various teams carefully watch each other, competing in a race within a race to post the shortest pit times.

“You follow what pit crews are getting it done, and you know when you’re getting respect on pit road,” says Rick Coulson, who serves as the catch can man, collecting excess fuel if it overflows.

“When the driver is running in the top 10 and he comes into the pit in third place but leaves in first, that’s what we train for,” Coulson says. “When the driver comes on the radio and says, ‘great job,’ or he moves up the leader board, that’s why we do it.”

Noble Sprayberry is a regular contributor to American Profile.

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