![]() ![]() With a single-car team this year, Wheeler didn’t have the luxury he has now. ![]() We’re allowed to do setups that we want to do, but I want to make sure that (crew chief Billy Scott) is one of the guys on both side of the fence and not going ‘I don’t know what they are doing, but I’ll find out why they are faster than me on Monday.’ That’s not really a good way to learn.” That’s one of the biggest things is I’m trying to get rid of personal preferences and pick a path to go down. “I think this is an efficient way to go,” Wheeler said. Lauletta had previously been an executive at Chip Ganassi Racing and saw how that organization’s NASCAR and Ind圜ar teams operated. Wheeler also credited Steve Lauletta, the team’s president. It just gave me confirmation that I cannot be scared to chase it.” “They saw the same holes that I have been seeing. “I found a few guys to talk and they said they studied the NASCAR system and was like they don’t think it’s better,” Wheeler said. The conversations with teams in other series showed Wheeler that he was headed in the right direction with this concept. Everyone knows where they’re headed for setup.” “In practice, everyone has their own ideas, but they have a boss and one of them is a senior race engineer, who says ‘You are going to change the camber, and you are going to change toe, and you’re going to report back to us what it does.’ Everyone knows where everyone’s setup is supposed to start. They work together, yet they have one core group on the station on pit lane calling the race. “I talked to people last January about this, knowing that Gen-7 was coming,” Wheeler told NBC Sports. Wheeler said he talked to “top-five teams, organizations” in Formula 1 and Ind圜ar via Zoom calls to learn how they structure their teams. Team co-owner Denny Hamlin said earlier this year that the organization was looking to be set up more similarly to a Formula 1 team. He’s putting those plans in place with the team adding Kurt Busch as a teammate to Bubba Wallace. A new approachĮven before 23XI Racing ran its first race this season, competition director Mike Wheeler looked at ways to do things differently when the organization expanded. “We’ll have a good Thanksgiving, and then we’ll come back and it will be reps city,” Wright said, alluding to plenty of practice for his pit crews. That will make this a busy time for pit crews as they prepare for a new way to do Cup pit stops. “Give it a year or give it two years, and you’ll see them in the 9s,” Masterson said on the possibility of sub-10-second pit stops for four tires. He noted that his team performed a 10.5-second stop, which featured only simulated fueling, during last week’s Next Gen test at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Eleven-eight in Daytona (in February) might be OK.” “I think by October of 2022 an 11.8 is probably going to lose you spots,” Wright said. He notes how Kyle Larson had an 11.8-second pit stop to get the lead on the final stop in the season finale at Phoenix to win the championship. Wright said that, eventually, the pit stops will be faster. “Even from our previous gun that we had to the Paoli gun (used by all teams) you are talking about 1/2- to 3/4-pound (difference), and we thought that was the end of the world,” Masterson said. One that is 2 pounds heavier than the previous air gun, estimates Chase Masterson, front tire changer for Tyler Reddick in Cup and Myatt Snider in Xfinity this past season. The tire changers also have much to adjust to with the single lug nut.įirst, they have a different air gun. “It’s just blast that thing up and that’s a major difference.” “Now, we don’t need that with one lug,” Wright said. That was important so the tire changers could hit a lug nut as the car was going up. A key for the jackman before was to get a nice stroke so the car rose smoothly. Now, Wright notes, a key element with the pit stop will be about the jackman. “The whole pit stop was about the lug nuts.” 8s, and man, that made everything,” he said. Previously, the key for any pit crew was finding tire changers who could remove five lug nuts in less than a second. Wright notes how the change alters the characteristics of the pit stop. So, how can going from five lug nuts to one on a wheel be such a big deal? He went on to add “This is the first time we’ve had so many unknowns.” “Every change seems major at the time, but this is change to everything,” Wright said. While that seems minor, it will impact pit stops in significant ways. The wheels will have one lug nut instead of five. ![]() In the 14 years pit crew coach Ray Wright has been at Richard Childress Racing, he’s seen NASCAR cut the over-the-wall pit crew from seven to six and then to five people.īut those changes don’t compare to what is in store for next season. ![]()
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