NASCAR Pit Crew: What Does a Jackman Do? How Are They Critical in a Race?

Several factors determine the success of a NASCAR driver, including their pit crew. At each pit stop, five crew members are allowed to jump the wall and work on the car but perhaps no one has a more physically demanding job as the jackman. In fact, that might be the most important and physically demanding role in a pit crew.

It’s no wonder that several teams hire athletes from other sports to work on their pit crews and the jackman position clearly explains why. The jackman has the physically straining task of jumping over the wall with a 30-pound jack, hitting the car’s jack post on each side, and sprinting around the car with that jack. The Next-Gen car is considered to be the heaviest in the sport’s history so lifting it in one go is not a job for the physically weak.

And that’s not all. The jackman also serves as a tire changer as they have to hang two tires during the whole pit stop process, the right front and the left rear. Those tires are not light in any way which just adds to the physically demanding element of the role. What’s more, is that the they have to be precise as well with the positioning of the jack and the tires.

“It took a few years for me to get comfortable, and it wasn’t even a lot to do with the physical side of things. It was more of the mental side that slowed everything up. A lot of this stuff was foreign to me. I was deep in basketball and it’s still foreign today, seven years later,” former basketball player and current Joe Gibbs Racing jackman Derrell Edwards said as per Muscle and Fitness.

An error by the jackman can not only compromise the process of fitting new tires onto the car, but it can also be a signal to the driver that it’s time to go. The car could then speed away with a wheel not fit correctly or worse. That in turn could seriously injure one of the crew members.