The Deadly Sins Of Tire Changing
Thursday, August 26th, 2010As a tire changer I have basically two jobs: take the lugnuts off and put the lugnuts on. Sounds simple enough right? Well don’t forget that during a pit stop there are 20 lugnuts to hit, that is 10 off and 10 back on. So in essence, that’s 20 chances to screw up. And trust me, there are a lot of ways to screw it up.
At Bristol, even though Jamie McMurray finished third, it was a tough night for his guys. After one round of pit stops under caution, McMurray had to bring his car back to pit road because the rear changer knocked off lugnuts. Meet tire changer deadly sin number one. When a new tire gets hung on the hub, the lugnuts sit on the end of the studs and wait for us to come back and tighten them up. On your way to getting them tight quickly, it only takes a small miss to knock one off. And sometimes the jackman is paying attention and sees you knock one off, so you can fix it without coming back to pit road. There are plenty of cases though, where a changer knocks one off, the official sees it, and the jackman sends the car. The team has just bought their driver a return trip to pit road. These situations aren’t exactly conducive to job security.
What’s interesting to note though, is that there are actually a lot of cases where a lugnut gets knocked off but the official doesn’t see it, and the car heads back to the race with only four. Things happen so quickly during a stop, that if a changer knocks one off, but is a good actor, the official won’t notice. Often times the official only knows a lug is missing because the changer was fumbling around.
The next deadly sin will also ruin a race for a team, and could cost the changer his job. This sin is usually predicated by a short radio message that goes like this: “I’ve got a vibration.” Those are words dreaded by every changer on pit road. Why? Because that can mean loose lugnuts. There are a ton of reasons why lugnuts could be left loose or come loose, but in any case, it’s really bad when they do. The vibration comes from the fact that the loose wheel is now wobbling on the hub, destroying both the wheel and the studs. And every changer has had those pit stops in his career where when he got done, he said a little prayer and thought “wow, I hope those are tight.” You then spend the next 60 laps praying that the car makes it to the next pit stop without hearing that dreaded message.
The other two sins I will mention here will kill pit stop times, but unless they are repeated over and over, probably won’t completely ruin a race. They are hanging lugnuts, and hitting more then 20 during a stop.
Hanging lugnuts means you hit all five off, but for whatever reason, one (or more) doesn’t come all the way off the stud. It’s a horrible feeling to grab a hold of the wheel to pull it off, only to be jarred by a stuck lugnut that won’t allow the wheel to come off. The next course of action is to either pick the gun back up and hit the offending nut off, or try and spin it with your fingers. And we will call attempting to spin the lug with your fingers deadly sin 3-B. Crew chiefs and pit crew coaches alike will chew some ass over that tactic because sometimes the lugnut might be stuck and your fingers aren’t strong enough to spin it off. Or maybe it took 10 turns to get the lug off. Either way, you just killed the stop.
In practices and at the races, we are always told to “just hit 20.” Only hitting 20 lugnuts is what we all strive for. Sometimes though, that just doesn’t happen. Instead of hitting five, it’s not uncommon for a changer to hit six, or seven, or eight off. There are again a million reasons why this could happen, but every extra hit means the pit stop is longer by two to three tenths of a second. So if I miss one time during each pattern, that’s four extra hits for the whole stop, which just cost my team one second in the pits.
These are all deadly sins because if done enough, they will all lead to a changers demise. And trust me, having to explain why you just screwed up a race is not exactly a fun conversation. No race can ever be won in the pits, but it certainly can be lost.
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It wasn’t as dramatic as historic, but 
SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Soaked in champagne and still grinning from ear to ear,