One of the biggest miracles in Cup Series racing might be that, in a high-pressure, high-emotion—and most important, a high-speed mechanized environment—that more over-the-wall pit crewmen aren’t injured on a weekly basis.
NASCAR’s instituted a number of rule changes, including pit road speed limits, limiting the number of opponents’ pit boxes you can drive through to reach your own pit, mandating single-file entrance to pit road, and crew members’ safety equipment, including helmets, fire suits and gloves.
But the bottom line is the biggest reason might be that well-trained professional athletes are involved—both in the race cars and on foot servicing them—and that they all exercise a lot of mutual respect and empathy.
“That’s how I feel about it, pretty much,” Kevin Harvick’s crew chief, Todd Berrier said. “I want them to treat me like they’d want to be treated. I’m not going to do anybody wrong and I’m going to make sure we treat ‘em as good as we want to be treated. But you still do tell each other when you’re going to be pitting and try to work together as much as you can.”
The topic came to a head in Atlanta, when a runaway tire from Ambrose’s No 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Toyota rolled into the “no man’s land” between pit road and the race track, where a JTGD crewman, Jimmy Watts, ran out to retrieve it; forcing NASCAR to throw a caution flag when Watts reached a dangerous location.
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This weekend at Bristol, the crew chiefs that were directly involved in the incident, Yates Racing’s Larry Carter and Kerr, as well as a couple other chiefs gave their perspectives both on what happened and how, in general, peaceful cooperation is the rule on pit roads throughout the series.
“I didn’t see it at the time,” Carter said of the loose tire. “But we obviously watched it on our pit stop film, so we saw exactly what happened. It’s just a situation where you’ve got some teams that are real good about controlling their tires and the team that was in front of us [No. 47], their tires kept ending up in our pit box.
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“I’m sure that was probably frustrating for the guys. It’s a deal where everybody tries to help everybody. If somebody’s pitting and you’re not pitting, then your guys will always catch tires for another team. We’re never, not going to help other guys out; but when you’re under live pit stops and you’ve got other guys coming in around you, you’ve kinda got to take care of yourself a little bit.
Kerr, said he didn’t exactly see what happened to the tire either, thanks to everything a crew chief’s responsible for during pit stops, including making sure his driver has a clear path to his stall, counting down the boxes before he can turn-in and reminding him to hold his brakes.
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