MARTINSVILLE, Va. — The jack was about to drop Chase Elliott’s car last weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the signal for him to fire out of his pit stall. But Elliott saw the crew in the box ahead still working on the right side of that car.
“I was all eyes on those guys because I knew the jack was fixing to drop for me, and I was going to have to make a pretty aggressive throttle input to try and slide the back of my car over to get enough angle to get out without having to back up,” Elliott said.
The jack dropped. Elliott shot out of his stall. He headed to the outside lane of pit road.
“A lot of times you’ll get cleared up to the (outside lane on pit road) wall and you’re not always clear,” Elliott said Saturday at Martinsville Speedway. “I typically, probably 90% of the time, always just look and keep an eye on things as they’re coming and I didn’t have a chance to look. I got cleared out there. I went, and I felt there at the last second that somebody was there, but I was too late.”
It’s the first Cup race on a short track this season.
Elliott and Ryan Blaney hit on pit road. They continued but it was another case of contact on pit road this season. As the NASCAR Cup Series races today at Martinsville Speedway, another track with a narrow pit road, the question is what could happen next and could it put pit crew members in jeopardy?
“I’m not exactly sure that there is a fix other than all of us being really on our game while we’re driving around human beings that are out there at large risk and also aware of your competitors as they’re coming and going getting into their stall or getting up to speed,” Elliott said.
Pit road has become more important as a way to gain positions. With the field closer together it can be easier to gain spots on pit road as opposed to the track. But it also has been a place lately where cars have spun and contract has been made. Homestead, Martinsville and Darlington, site of next weekend’s race, have among the narrowest pit roads on the Cup circuit.
Last weekend’s race at Homestead also saw Josh Berry bounce off Kyle Larson’s car and spin, collecting Joey Logano. Both Berry and Logano spun into unoccupied pit stalls. Logano called for Homestead to widen pit road as part of potential renovation projects.
“I don’t want to hit somebody,” Logano said. “I don’t want that on my conscience. When you look at (Homestead), it’s happened a lot there. If they’re renovating, doing all this stuff, if they could move the pit wall a little bit (to widen pit road) and maybe save someone’s life, pretty cool. That would be worth a few dollars if they can do that somehow.”
Joey Logano made his comments this week on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio after he was involved in a pit road incident last weekend at Homestead.
Homestead-Miami Speedway is tied for seventh among NASCAR Cup tracks in terms of the narrowest pit roads. That is based on the distance measured from the edge of a pit stall to the outer line or wall.
The pit road at World Wide Technology Raceway — a track that moves into the Cup playoffs for the first time this season — is the tightest in the series at 22 feet wide.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway ranks second in Cup with a pit road that is 24 feet wide. The pit road at Circuit of the Americas is 26 feet wide to rank third in Cup, according to Racing Insights. Tied for fourth is Darlington Raceway and Martinsville Speedway. Both have pit roads that are 28 feet wide. Next is Homestead, Atlanta and Texas as 32 feet wide.
But it’s more than the width of pit road that can contribute to such incidents. With most of the field often on the lead lead lap and pitting under caution together, pit road can be as congested as rush-hour traffic and any contact could lead a car into a pit crew.
Christopher Bell earns his first Cup pole of the season, while Hendrick Motorsports takes the next three spots in the starting lineup.
Pit stop times also are getting faster. That also has an impact on what happens on pit road. Teams measure pit stops from the moment the car is jacked up to when the jack goes down after a four-tire stop. Eight second pit stops are becoming more common.
“The pit stops are all super close in timing,” points leader William Byron said. “Like an 8.5 (second stop) is top of the board, best pit stop you can have, and then a 9.5 is like a middle of the road to a slow stop. So I think you’re just seeing a lot of aggression because the pit stops are so fast and everyone is getting kind of cleared into — like you can have a decent or a slow stop and you might lose three or four spots because everyone’s in a really close pile.”
With quicker stops, teams can be completing their work as cars further back in the field are coming into their stall. That’s what happened at Las Vegas two weeks ago.
Carson Hocevar made contact with Ty Gibbs, turning Gibbs’ car around in his pit stall. Hocevar was exiting his box when Gibbs turned to enter his box just in front of Hocevar’s stall.
“(Gibbs’) slowed down for (Ross Chastain), so we … assumed that he was letting us in,” Hocevar said. “Based on SMT (data), (Gibbs) sped up quite a bit and was faster into his box by a few miles an hours than he had all day. I don’t know if he … was trying to beat us in. I’m not really sure.
“Just looked at it, we made an aggressive call knowing that was going to be close, but we thought that was maybe going to be the difference of cycling to the front row vs. being third or fourth.”
Ryan Blaney will look to Martinsville to snap his streak of failing to finish the last three races.
Hocevar’s Spire Motorsports teammate, Michael McDowell, has seen the aggressiveness change on pit road throughout his Cup career.
“The level of execution that it takes now to win Cup races is so much higher than it was then,” said McDowell, who made his Cup debut in 2008. “So, if you saw a guy coming down pit road and you knew it was going to be close, you’d give a little room.
“Of, if you’re leaving and it was close, you would give a little room because if you had a fast car, it was going to get spread out, you’ll get that spot back.
“Now, it’s not like that. Now, you just don’t give an inch because you don’t want to lose one spot and that’s why you see more of the action on pit road. Because once they drop the jack, you’ve got to go. It doesn’t matter if a car is coming in or not, you’ve got to go and nobody’s willing to give. That’s why we see more incidents on pit road.”
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