![]() They were wearing uniform shirts, sunglasses and blue jeans with packs of Winstons and tins of Skoal jammed into the back pockets. Oh, and the men running out into high-speed traffic carrying tires and air hoses and cans of fuel, they weren't wearing helmets or even knee pads. There were also no pit road speed limits until 1991, and it took death for NASCAR to change that. The asphalt the crew members dove onto was the same pebble-infested, tire-chewing gray top on the racing surface, dating back to when its Carolina red clay was paved over in 1959. ![]() In '87 - heck, in '57, '67, '77 and even '47 - those pits had none of the above. Today, after the resurrected racetrack's $20 million makeover, those pit stalls are made of freshly poured concrete, the pit lane is brand new blacktop and crews are protected by a knee-high pit wall, all illuminated by a sparkling LED lighting system and a tightly policed 30 mph pit road speed limit during the all-star race. The last of those 40 boxes dumps cars out onto the racing surface in the middle of Turn 1 like the exit of waterslide. The first of those rectangles comes up way too suddenly just inside the entry of Turn 3. It will take place on a North Wilkesboro Speedway pit lane that, like in 1987, is a too-tight ribbon of stalls that dang near wrap all the way around the oblong oval. "He has the simplest job of all and no way I'm doing that."ĭuring this weekend's All-Star festivities, there will be a revival of that format, a NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge held amid Friday night's qualifying session, race cars sliding into the pit stall with no pit road speeding penalties enforced. just the guy who steps out there holding the pit sign, he's just running out there into traffic, basically onto the frontstretch," Sobecki says of the flickering vision of the RCR crew member holding a giant metal "3" sign as Earnhardt's Monte Carlo hammers directly toward him. All I can think is, these people are insane." "They'd come down pit road and they're downshifting, and my mind I'm like, there's no way that I would jump out in front of this a dozen times per race, just hoping he can stop the car and while the other cars are going by at 80, 90 mph. "The closest thing that we ever had was several years ago we did pit stops for All-Star qualifying at Charlotte, the only time there's been no pit road speed limits over the last 30 years," Sobecki said. What he just watched on his phone, that's crazy. He is 37 years old, and throughout 18 years of carrying tires and slinging jacks, the Pittsburgh native has endured a torn meniscus, MRIs on both shoulders, a groin tear and so many back injuries and muscle pulls that he long ago lost count.ĭude is large. He has been going over the wall since 2006, a decade after North Wilkesboro Speedway was shuttered. "You don't ever want to admit that you'd be scared, but man, there's no way I'm doing this," confesses Josh Sobecki, jackman for Kyle Busch's No. ![]() "Yeah, I got to be honest with you, these are real men right here." 625-mile North Wilkesboro bullring that will be resurrected this weekend, just in time to put today's crew members, many of whom weren't yet born the last time it hosted NASCAR's premier series, to work in that same space. 3 GM Goodwrench - and before that, Wrangler Jeans - Chevy at the. They are young, finely tuned athletes, with stick-and-ball championship rings and other accolades earned in college sports stadiums and through countless hours spent in weight rooms and film rooms, perpetually seeking the perfect body and the perfect pit stop.īut now, here they sit, slack-jawed, watching their RCR predecessors, Dale Earnhardt's "Flying Aces," as they change four tires and fuel on the No. These video viewers are modern-day pit crew members at Richard Childress Racing. ![]() Not even the parade of logos and colors provided by sponsorship dollars from so many companies that no longer exist. The moving images from back in the day at North Wilkesboro Speedway, closed since 1996 but about to be improbably revived for Sunday's NASCAR All-Star Race, are hard for any modern mind to process.īut for this particular audience at this particular time, their disbelieving shakes of the head and open-mouth, squinting facial expressions are not in reaction to the grainy, square-boxed, standard-definition video or the massive, square-edged race car body styles. Return to North Wilkesboro's petite pit lane illustrates how far NASCAR's pit crew safety has come You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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