AVONDALE, Ariz. — Kyle Busch will have a new pit crew this weekend for the third time in four races, pointing to a bigger issue that Richard Childress Racing seeks to address.
Busch will have two new tire changers and a new jackman for Sunday’s Cup race at Phoenix Raceway (3:30 p.m. ET on Fox). The changes come after last week’s pit road woes at Las Vegas saw him fall from second place with about 100 laps left to a 26th-place finish. It’s a continuation of issues that Busch’s team has had on pit road since the Daytona 500.
“We just need a consistent crew that is not going to be making mistakes,” Andy Petree, executive vice president at Richard Childress Racing, told NBC Sports on Friday. “One of the problems with these young guys and development guys is you put them on Kyle’s car and he’s running second, they’re trying to win. I’m not sure they’re mentally ready for it.
“They do practice and stuff and they’re just as solid as anybody. So how do you identify that in your people? That’s why we’re making so many changes. We’re trying to find a mixture of guys that can handle some pressure and deliver a solid performance, not stellar. We’re not even looking for stellar right now.”
With the cars more equal and so much driver data available, there are few differences on the track. Denny Hamlin noted on Friday that with all the data, drivers are “going to continue to morph ourselves into the same driver.” That puts more emphasis on pit road and those who go over the wall to service the car.
“The easiest place to pass somebody else is when they’re sitting still, on pit road,” Kyle Busch said Friday. “So we have to be better on pit road.”
Petree said the organization is trying to get its development crew members more work.
“We’ve put a pretty big effort trying to get one of our development crews on pit road just to get them some experience,” he said. “We’ve not been successful with it. I don’t know what we’ve got to do. It’s certainly frustrating.”
Busch talked last month at Atlanta about the organization being unable to sign some free agent pit crew members, in part, because Richard Childress Racing’s location in Welcome, North Carolina, is about an hour from where most Cup teams and pit crew members are based.
Petree also mentioned that issue Friday.
“Our location hurts us,” he said. “We can’t recruit. It’s a disadvantage for us to recruit people to Welcome. It’s a more difficult challenge than Concord or Mooresville (North Carolina, where some teams and crew members are based) to be able to recruit people that are already established, really good people. It’s hard to go get them because they don’t want to drive an hour and a half to practice.”
The issue is not new for Richard Childress Racing. That’s been a selling point to some — it’s away from all the other teams — and an obstacle to others.
“Here’s where it gets real, though,” Petree said Friday. “When Richard (Childress) says ‘I don’t care what it costs. Go get somebody.’ We tried that. It didn’t work.”
So what then?
“We are looking at a longer-term solution,” Petree said.
He declined to reveal those plans. Petree said the idea of relocating the pit crews closer to Concord or Mooresville so they don’t have as long of a drive is not part of what he’s working on, but he said that such a notion is “not off the table.”
“We’re taking a fresh look at it,” Petree said of what to do next.
But that’s further away. Busch needs a better pit crew now.
Busch conceded that the pit crew struggles have led to him being penalized the past two weeks for speeding and pitting outside the box.
“When I feel like I’m in a downward position when I’m behind, I’m going to try to get extra, I’m going to try to get more,” Busch said. “That’s led to my speeding penalties. That’s led to me sliding through the box because I know I have to make up time on pit road myself to kind of compensate for what we’re losing when we’re stopped in the box.”
Petree said he talked to Busch earlier this week about trying to do too much on pit road.
“I had a long talk with him on Monday about the points we gave away at Vegas — and we gave a lot of points away,” Petree said. “He slid through those pits. He says he’s trying to make it up. He knows we don’t have what we need.”
An issue is that Busch is already among the best on pit road — if not the best — in various categories, from entering pit road, rolling time on pit road and other categories.
But with Busch already among the leaders in those areas, there’s not much more of an advantage he can build before or after the pit stop. So any extra effort puts him closer to going too fast on pit road.
“I know everybody at RCR is busting their tail and working hard … we got what we got,” Busch said. “We’ve got to work through it and if that’s changing players around then we’ve got to change players around and we’ve got to find something that’s going to strengthen (the pit crew).”
So far little has worked.
At the Daytona 500, the car was dropped from the jack before the left front tire was secured, forcing Busch to slowly drive around the track before returning to pit road. He had been running fourth before the issue.
The following week at Atlanta, Busch was penalized for speeding just past the halfway mark, costing him any chance to score points in the second stage.
Then came last week’s problems at Las Vegas. One change from last week is better communication among the unit to avoid the penalty Busch received for pitting outside the box.
Busch slid in his stall and the front of his car was over the line. The crew serviced the car, leading to the penalty. No one on the team noticed Busch was over the line
“So typically in years past at (Joe Gibbs Racing), we’d always have a system of — it’s the changer’s responsibility or a guy behind the wall,” Busch said of signifying that the car is outside the box. “Like one of the pit crew support guys behind the wall just needs to start jumping up-and-down and waving … We’ve talked about some of those things to put more responsibility on more players so we cannot have the penalty exist.”
A solution has been found to handle that issue, now the team needs to find a way to have solid pit stops.
“We don’t have anything to lose, so let’s make some changes,” Petree said. “See if we can find us a rhythm here. If we do, and we can get through a couple of races with some guys that are solid, we can work on the longer-term solution instead of this fire we’re trying to put out.”