Working on a top-tier NASCAR pit crew is a special experience. These crew members get to compete in a high-pressure environment, and they get to directly impact whether their driver wins or loses a race.
For athletes who come from collegiate and professional sports, this ability to go to battle with their teammates is priceless. Oh, and they also get to spend time hanging out with numerous NASCAR fans each week.
Turns out, this is one of the best perks of the job.
“We love seeing people that are passionate about our special interests, what we’re doing as work,” Brandon Chapman, fueler for Michael McDowell, told FanBuzz at Richmond Raceway.
Ty Boeck, McDowell’s rear changer, wholeheartedly agreed, saying, “I mean, the more people know about the sport, what goes on, on the pit crew side of things, the better.”
“If someone comes up and asks me a question while we’re prepping tires or messing with our guns for the race, like, I enjoy that people care enough to even ask.”
The NASCAR garage is an incredibly busy place. Fans are wandering around looking for autographs or just taking in the full experience.
Teams are prepping race cars for practice, qualifying, and the race. PR and marketing people are hustling back and forth with drivers or tour groups. Media members are roaming around looking for stories.
Meanwhile, pit crew members are prepping tires, taking equipment to pit road, or grabbing a quick pre-race meal when time allows. They are also taking a few minutes to speak passionately about their respective roles to any curious fans.
“I mean, the fans allow us to do what we love in any sport, regardless of what it is,” McDowell’s jackman, Dax Hollifield, said. “I mean, at the end of the day, professional athletes, professional sports, we’re just entertainers.
“Somebody’s paying the bills. As much as we wanna feel like we’re changing the world, we’re really not. It’s the fans and the companies and the sponsors that are paying our way to be here.”
Sometimes, these interactions involve big-name celebrities who wanted to check out a race. Other times, they involve groups of young kids learning about the sport.
Some interactions involve diehard fans who started going to the track when Jeff Gordon was an upstart rookie.
The crew members aren’t picky. They will take part in every conversation that they can, schedule permitting. The best part is that the questions are never the same.
Some focus on the equipment required to complete pit stops or how crew members spend time between stops. Other questions revolve around injuries sustained in the line of duty.
Not many fans know that several tire changers have a large lump on their thumb from the air guns.
“We’re more than happy to answer questions and things like that,” Luke Bussel, McDowell’s tire carrier, said. “It’s interesting to me. I love it, and so I’d love to let everybody else know how interesting it is.”
“…I mean, you love the racing part of it, and then you love the pit side of it. That’s what makes NASCAR so much different than all the other racing.
“The pit crew and the pit road is actually a part of the race. It really matters, and there’s not a whole ton of people out here. There’s not 17 people out here changing a tire.”
Bussel, while relatively new to NASCAR, has seen an increase in attention at the track. It helps that he and the No. 71 Spire Motorsports crew won the Pit Crew Challenge during All-Star Weekend.
He also played for Virginia Tech in college, so trips to Richmond and Martinsville are home games. His conversations with local fans bounce between pit stops and college rivalry games. And yes, he takes a lot of selfies with avid Virginia Tech fans.
Other crew members come from different backgrounds or schools outside of “NASCAR country,” so they may not necessarily have these “stick and ball” discussions with fans.
Instead, they will mostly talk about the finer points of NASCAR, the biggest differences between wins and losses, and why one car is so much faster than another.
“The most frequent questions I get asked are, ‘How heavy are the tires, how much PSI do you run your gun at,'” Boeck added. “Just because that is my job.
“So they come up to me whenever they get to be on pit road before the race, like, ‘Hey, tell me about this gun.’ I appreciate that.”
Sometimes, the conversations revolve around little details like why certain tires have yellow tape while others have orange tape.
Turns out, this isn’t “rocket science” as Spire Motorsports crew members explain. They just choose yellow because it has an “L” while orange has an “R.” This helps them quickly find left- and right-side tires in the heat of the moment.
“(The fans) nerd out to the point where I tell them, ‘I’m going to be honest with you guys, like, I service the car, I don’t know,'” Max Marsh, McDowell’s front changer, said while laughing. “‘I’m not an engineer, I don’t know a ton, I came from playing football to this. I don’t know yet.’
“I want to get to the point where any question that’s asked, I’ll be able to answer, but, yeah, there definitely are some more in-depth questions where I’m like, ‘I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know. I’ll get back to you. Let me go ask someone and get back to you on that.'”
The education actually extends far beyond tire tape, air guns, and tracks where pit stops happen backwards.
Adam Riley II, Noah Gragson’s rear tire changer, explained during a conversation at Darlington Raceway that he embraces these interactions because he just wants to help people become more aware of NASCAR.
This is his best way to change opinions and create new fans, whether it is at the track or when he is helping out at a Young Life camp.
“Walt Whitman said it best — he said, to always be curious, never judgmental,” Riley said. “So, be curious. You ask questions, you start to learn more. You’re judgmental, you just make these preconceived assumptions or stigmas that when you race, you just always turn left and just wreck really fast or really hard.
“And no, it’s a lot more behind the scenes, a lot more intricacies to the sport. Plus, I’ll put myself in a fan’s shoes, like, if I was really interested in a sport but didn’t know anything about it, what would be the best way to kind of get schooled up on it?”
The pit crew members don’t have to embrace this role; they show up to the track each week with the goal of delivering perfect pit stops and propelling their driver to the win. Nothing else really matters as much.
Fan interactions don’t pay the bills or lead to championships.
Yet, they make these conversations a priority. It is less of a job, and more of a privilege. Sometimes, it’s a responsibility that they welcome.
“You never know who you’ll meet, right,” Rick Rozier, John Hunter Nemechek’s fueler, said. “It could be the first-timer (or) the partner who’s always at every weekend, and I think it’s our due diligence as employees of NASCAR and pit crew of Legacy Motor Club to be able to really embrace their presence and really kind of make their experience one-of-a-kind.
“I think that’s what separates NASCAR, the sport itself, compared to like your football or basketball. They can’t interact with those on-field athletes during a game, but they can here. So that opportunity in itself, I think, just makes us separate from other sports and allows us to really give folks a different experience.”
The athletes on pit road have long embraced this role as they have spent countless hours talking to fans. Legacy Motor Club crews have also gone a step further by going to the suites to spend time with the team’s guests.
They have passed out food, talked about their respective paths to NASCAR, how certain football or Olympic lifting skills translate to pit stops, and even dabbled in some “Mario Kart” competitions.
“I think both our teams — the 42 and 43 — we all are able to embrace and share the load on different days,” Rozier added.
“Whether it’s somebody having to go ahead and do some more extra work — pre-race stuff or having an additional meetings on the side or whatever the case may be — if one is busy, the other one will step up and give that same fan experience.”
And while these crew members have enjoyed these conversations, it took the fans going away for them to truly appreciate what they had.
The silence of empty grandstands drove the point home and made these crew members feel incredibly lonely.
“I think it was the second race back from COVID,” Kellen Mills, Erik Jones’s jackman, said at Darlington. “We won the race out of that stall right there (pointing). We all jumped off the wall and after about two seconds, it’s like ‘This sucks!’ It’s five guys making noise to an empty (grandstands).
“I don’t know if we wouldn’t have had that experience, I don’t know if I ever would have put in as much value in it as I did after that moment.”
Mills, who previously worked on Joe Gibbs Racing teams, always appreciated NASCAR fans. Yet, his perspective completely changed after that unique 2020 season.
He won seven races while working on Denny Hamlin’s pit crew. Fans attended precious few of these races due to NASCAR’s COVID protocols.
Now that fans are back at the track in full force, Mills makes it quite clear how much he appreciates having them around.
“Clearly, they bring something, but in that moment I realized, dude, without the passion and the excitement from them, all the effort, all the hours, all the everything — not that the acknowledgement is a huge deal, but it mattered a bunch,” Mills said.
“And since that moment, ‘Dude, this is huge.’ And you hope that they know that it matters that they care.”