AVONDALE, Ariz. - It takes 36 weeks, millions of dollars and gigawatts of anxiety to win the Nextel Cup championship.
It all could be undone in 17 seconds, by a buck's worth of lug nuts and a slip of a hand. The jobs of the jack men, gas men, catch-can men and tire changers always were stressful. The pressure-filled Chase for the Championship has sent them off the chart.
"No one sees the pit crew until they make a mistake," said Jimmie Johnson's jack man, Chris Anderson, who was born in Brooksville and grew up in Tampa. "You only notice them if they're really, really good, or really, really bad.
"Our job is try to keep it in the middle and keep it consistent."
Anderson's team whisked through a four-tire stop in 11.9 seconds last weekend at Atlanta, helping put Johnson in position to challenge Kurt Busch for the points lead. Crew chief Chad Knaus called the stop "the most important factor and an incredible factor" in a win that propelled Johnson into second place in the standings, 59 points back.
Johnson was running in the top five with fewer than 25 laps left but was unable to catch Mark Martin's seemingly dominant No. 6 Ford when Knaus told him to pit on a caution. He needed a fast stop because Martin had elected not to pit.
He got it.
"We had a lot of motivation, I guess," Anderson said, referring to a quest to win in honor of 10 who died Oct.24 when a Hendrick Motorsports plane flying to Martinsville crashed. "There was a lot of pressure on us because a lot of other Hendrick teams weren't contending to win the race. The more and more we thought about it, we were going to do everything we could."
By the time Anderson lowered the No. 48 Chevrolet, Johnson was in a position to restart second. After changing two tires on another late caution, Johnson assumed the lead with 10 laps left to win his third race in a row.
"It was a little trying there when that caution came out with just a few laps on our tires," Knaus said. "We didn't know if we wanted to pit for sure or not. Jimmie was questioning it. I was questioning it. We did it. It definitely showed some dividends there."
The Chase illustrated the importance of pit crews before it began.
Jeremy Mayfield was stalking the 10th and final playoff spot before the final race of the regular season Sept. 11 at Richmond when he made the bold prediction that he would win and qualify for the Chase. He had little choice. It was win or be content fighting for 11th the rest of the season.
Mayfield pulled it off, using quick stops and an aggressive tire strategy for his first win since 2000. Drivers respond to quick stops.
"With the drivers I worked with, Jeff (Gordon) and Jimmie, whenever you had a good pit stop and put them in second, they seem to say, "Wow, my boys helped me out, now I need to fight for this position,' " Anderson said. "That's our main goal, to keep them going forward."
Conversely, the anticipation of a mediocre pit stop can be demoralizing or prompt rash maneuvers.
"If you don't do well on pit road and you keep losing positions, it just takes the wind out of the driver," said Kenny Francis, Mayfield's team director. "He knows there's almost nothing he can do to make all those positions back up. It gets to where you don't even want to come down pit road because you don't know what's going to happen."
Crews practice pit stops constantly. They are recorded and analyzed. Coaches have been hired and over-the-wall crews are required to be more athletic. Still, a 15-second stop involves more than physical prowess.
"A lot of it is just mentally preparing yourself to do that same motion over and over, kind of like a golf swing," Francis said. "There is a lot of physical skill, but it is not complicated skill. It just happens real fast, and you're trying to prevent extra motion, extra mistakes."
The devil is always in the details, and in a pit stop, it is often in the lug nuts. Affixing and removing them with a compression gun causes more problems than anything else. They have the potential to turn a 13-second stop into a time-killer or, worse, a penalty for leaving the pit stall with too few lug nuts.
"If you hit them all and then hit one and it only comes part-way off, that's trouble," Francis said. "Normally when you hang one, it's only on by a thread or two, and the tire changer doesn't know he hung it and he puts his gun down and goes to take the tire off.
"And then he has to pick his gun back up and hit that lug one more time, and it costs you three or four seconds and that's just a killer right there."
Each track offers its own set of variables, from slanted pavement to cramped working space or, as is the case with Phoenix International Raceway, stalls in tight corners.
"It's tough, but if you let it consume you, you're definitely going to choke," Anderson said. "A pitcher throws a baseball and you're swinging at it and you get a bunch of pitches. Miss the first one, you get more. You get one opportunity here, and if you miss it, you're done."
