It may not look that way but motor racing is as much of a team sport as it gets and NASCAR is no different. It is never just about how good one can drive or how fast a car is, a lot of it is about the people who change the tires in the pits. It’s one of the most intricate yet fast-paced jobs in the sport. In a recent video, NASCAR explained exactly what a tire changer does, even though the name is pretty self-explanatory.
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Five people are allowed to jump over the pit wall and work on the car in the stand, two of them are tire changers. The job is pretty simple, loosen one lug nut, take the tire off, place the new tire in, and tighten the lugnut. All of this needs to be done in as short a time as possible to not lose a lot of track positions. A pit crew’s performance can make or break a driver’s day and more often than not at the highest level of motorsports, they get it right.
But they don’t always get it right. There have been instances where things have gone wrong for the pit crew and the driver. Failing to tighten the lugnut properly seems to be the most common error that pit crews in NASCAR make. If it is found to be loose on pit road, the driver has to stop for an extra few seconds and lose out on valuable track position. However, if the wheels turn out to be loose while out on the track, either the driver will have to come back in again or the tire will just simply detach from the wheel.
Pit crews are crucial to a driver’s success in a race but sometimes, a driver might unintentionally unsettle his crew just because of how big a name they might be.
Kyle Busch explains how drivers can unsettle pit crews
Kyle Busch is a man who has had his fair share of issues on pit road of late with Richard Childress Racing. According to Rowdy, if a big-name driver joins a team, that pit crew might feel pressured because the fans and the media primarily focus on such big names. The slightest mistake will be exposed on national television and that’s not going to be good publicity for anyone.
“I feel like, sometimes, just the nature of a driver’s name might put added pressure on a team. Because they’re looked at a lot more and they’ve got eyeballs on them a little bit heavily. The teams that I’ve had in the past have done phenomenal jobs of living up to the pressure,” the two-time Cup Series champion said.
There’s no such thing as an easy job in the world of motorsports and being a tire changer must be one of the most difficult. So mastering that art truly does garner a lot of appreciation.
