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What Is a Pit Stop in NASCAR? What Happens During Pit Stops?

Published 04/21/2021, 11:30 AM EDT

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USA Today via Reuters

Pit stops are perhaps the main components in any type of motorsports. The performance of the pit crew can prove to be the difference between dominating a NASCAR race or even finishing outside of the top 10. Pit crew members train hard to guarantee they are in great shape prepared to work quickly; minor missteps can destroy whole races.

Drivers come into the pit lane somewhere between four to ten times. It depends on the length of the race and how things work out on the track. Races run many miles, requiring successive stops to supplant tires and top off the 18-gallon gas tank. Teams can even change suspensions and fix broken or twisted breaks.

A NASCAR pitstop goes on for around 12 seconds. Pit stops play an integral part in deciding the position of drivers. While teams sometimes opt to call a driver into the pits as a strategy to undercut a team, they also do it to simply replace degraded tires.

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Different Crew members for NASCAR Pitstop

Each NASCAR pit group can have up to eight individuals in different parts. However, only five are permitted over the wall during pitstop.

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Everything begins when the vehicle comes to the pit stop. Team members hold on with tires, air guns, and fuel. At the point when the vehicle is simply yards away, everybody hops over the short wall.

The Jackman hauls a 22-pound jack and his responsibility is to prop each side of the vehicle up so the tires can be changed. The Jackman will bring down the vehicle and sign for the driver to go after a successful change of tires.

There are two tire changers. They will at that point change the tire before the tire carrier will put the new tire on the vehicle so they can bolt it on.

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The tire carriers are liable for getting the new tires over and to the tire changers. While Jackman will help the rear tire changer, the tire carrier will help the front tire changer with changing and swapping the new tire. The gasman is responsible for refueling the vehicle.

No matter what their job is, each member of the pit crew is immensely important to the job; one wrong move, and a marvelously run race goes down the drain.

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Written by:

Abhay Aggarwal

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Abhay Aggarwal is sports analyst at EssentiallySports. Having joined ES in early 2020, he has over 300 NASCAR, Formula 1, and Tennis articles to his name. Abhay has been an avid motorsports fan for over a decade, and he even attended the inaugural Indian Grand Prix in 2011.
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