R.J. Barnette doesn’t dare move. He stares at pit road, his face void of all expression except for one: pain.
An excruciating injury to his back almost kept him off pit road. Movement is risky business for him.
The light drizzle that mists the air that afternoon at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn is only delaying the inevitable, searing pain that lies ahead for Barnette. Yet, he shows up and he’s ready.
The NASCAR Cup Series Firekeepers Casino 400 race is important to Hendrick Motorsports as the playoffs creep closer and Detroit automakers are often trackside for it. An experienced pit crew member such as Barnette, 37, is crucial in a pit stop because shaving even a millisecond off the time to service the car could make or break a race for the driver.
So an anxious buzz spread across the Hendrick Motorsports organization earlier — from the garages at the track to the team trailers, up to team owner Rick Hendrick himself — as to whether Barnette could perform or they’d have to find a less-experienced substitute.
“I’m very nervous, very nervous,” Hendrick Motorsports President and General Manager Jeff Andrews told the Detroit Free Press at the prospect of Barnette not being able to work that day.
But when Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson soars into pit road during the race, flying straight at Barnette at about 60 mph, Barnette doesn’t hesitate. He can’t. He has a job to do.
He jumps over a short wall and runs in front of Larson’s car as it slams to a halt. He’s carrying tires that weigh 50 pounds each, an unimaginable weight for someone with an injured back. A loud air pressure release blasts and the car is up on a jack. Then an explosive pop and drill pierce the air as a high-powered drill zaps out a single lug nut on each tire. Barnette swaps in new tires. Gas fumes permeate the air as some gasoline from a 95-pound drum feeding fuel to Larson’s car spills onto the pavement.
Barnette is now running in front of the car, barely clearing it as Larson punches the throttle, the engine roars and Larson is back on the track working up to nearly 200 mph. The whole thing is over in less than 10 seconds and Larson gained ground moving up in position.
It was a good day at the office for Barnette after all.
A big race in front of Detroit’s automakers
The pit crew is the five people (usually men, but there are some women in some crews) who change the tires, fuel the car and make adjustments to the car during the race. It’s a physically demanding job often done at temperatures that exceed 100 degrees while wearing a fireproof suit. The pit crew does five to 12 pit stops per race, depending on the race or the track.
Their speed is crucial to improving a driver’s chances of winning. In fact, the speed of Barnette and the rest of Larson’s pit crew in 2021 was instrumental in helping Larson capture the NASCAR Cup Series Championship that year.
Barnette has been doing this since 2009.
Inside Hendrick Motorsports’ team trailer, all morning, Barnette’s teammates had waited for word on his condition. Barnette emerged from his physical therapy session about 1 p.m. He headed to his locker, ready to suit up in his fireproof uniform and go to work. How is his back? “Sore. Very, very sore,” Barnette told the Free Press. “And pretty tight.”
Still, a couple hours later after the race had started, he had performed. If Barnette was in pain, the flow of adrenaline blocked it because he didn’t show it then nor during Larson’s other pit stops. By the end of lap 74 — when NASCAR had to postpone the finish of the race until Monday due to rain — Larson had moved from his starting spot of 16th place up to third place. On Monday, when the race resumed, Barnette worked again. Larson finished in a respectable fifth place.
A trackside view and sound of 218-mph race
Chris Buescher won the race in a Ford Mustang car Monday. It was his second straight win this season.
But this story isn’t about race results. It is about what goes on behind-the-scenes to compete at the elite NASCAR Cup Series level, especially for the most successful NASCAR team racing today: Hendrick Motorsports.
The Detroit Free Press had full access to the track-side areas of Hendrick Motorsports’ four racing teams last Sunday, including a seat next to owner and racing legend Rick Hendrick. This article is the first of a two-part series that goes behind the scenes with Hendrick, who, besides his storied career with NASCAR, owns one of the largest privately held car dealership groups in the country.
Hendrick is also one of the top Corvette collectors in the world with a breathtaking, 58,000-square-foot museum where he stores his cars on a campus in Concord, North Carolina. The museum is restricted-access. A Free Press reporter and photographer spent a day inside with Hendrick and his team. That story will be told here next week.
The Firekeepers Casino 400 race in Michigan is a 400-mile race around a 2-mile oval. NASCAR is a sport best seen live, especially in a pit box, which is a mobile operation center with seating. It’s right on pit row next to pit road where Hendricks’ pit crews work in a flurry to fill gas tanks, change wheels and tinker with race cars during white-knuckle stops in races.
The box holds the crew chief, owners and others who monitor things live and on a wall of screens showing the race and racing data. The crew chief barks over a two-way radio with the drivers. When the cars started their engines Sunday, engine roars thundered through the pit boxes. When the pace car broke off, signaling the start of the race, the pit box floor vibrated and seats shook each time the cars whipped by at top speeds. Bear in mind, pit road separates the box from the track, but that doesn’t much mitigate the velocity of the more than three dozen machines roaring past at well over 200 mph.
The track at Michigan International Speedway is wide with long straightaways, allowing for maximum speed. At top speed, the cars make the 2-mile loop in about 38 seconds, amped up from the comparatively sluggish warm-up with the pace car, when the loop took about two minutes.
One person with intimate knowledge of this track is Jeff Gordon, another NASCAR legend who traded the driver’s seat for an inside job as vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports.
“This track is shaped almost like proving grounds,” Gordon said.
“I did love this track,” he said, recalling his days as a driver. “It gave you a feel for what you’re looking for as a driver. I like to go fast and this is a very fast track.”
Gordon said speeds would get up to 218 mph in the straightaway.
High-end luxury to host GM elite
Hendrick, 74, has designated Gordon, 52, to succeed him on the racing side of the business one day.
On Sunday afternoon, before the race, Gordon sits with his boss in Hendrick’s luxurious 45-foot RV, a sort of hotel room on wheels parked in the infield. It’s equipped with the comforts of home: a dining table, a small kitchen with a nearly full-size, stocked refrigerator, a bedroom and a bathroom. The NASCAR garages are nearby and this RV is where Hendrick — who had flown from North Carolina to Michigan on his personal jet that morning — relaxes when he’s not watching the track.
An hour earlier in this RV, Hendrick hosted General Motors President Mark Reuss, Reuss’ daughter and President of North America Rory Harvey. CEO Mary Barra, who typically would also come, was out of town. But Reuss is a frequent guest.
“I’ve known (Hendrick) my whole life,” Reuss said. “And that’s our home track and so it’s really fun to go there. Being part of that is a big deal. We’ve got several teams there with Chevrolet, but Rick is a mega-dealer of ours, a business partner for GM Defense and a racing partner.”
In 2021, Hendrick Motorsports engineers started building exoskeleton frames, which protect his race car drivers, for the Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicles built by GM’s subsidiary, GM Defense.
Forty years of racing
Next year, Hendrick Motorsports will celebrate its 40th anniversary. It is now the winningest team in Cup Series history after breaking the record in 2021 held for more than 60 years by the legendary Petty Enterprises.
Hendrick Motorsports’ Cup Series holds titles with five different drivers: Jimmie Johnson (seven), Jeff Gordon (four), Terry Labonte (1996), Chase Elliott (2020) and Larson (2021).
The Hendrick Motorsports race shop in North Carolina is a state-of-the-art facility with 430,000 square feet of workspace on 140 acres. It employs 550 people to support the four full-time Chevrolet stock-car teams it owns. Hendrick’s drivers, Alex Bowman, William Byron, Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson, all competed in the Firekeepers Casino 400 race Sunday.
The success that Hendrick has had, including being inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2017, is one reason that on Sunday before the race he and Gordon are enjoying a light lunch from Panera, talking strategy inside the RV with no sign of nerves.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” Hendrick says. “I’ll tell you when I get nervous, when they start doing the national anthem and line up on pit row.”
‘Work to do … not insurmountable’
There is another time he gets nervous: any time there’s a crash. More on that later.
The Hendrick team started arriving at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday morning. The team trailers are their mobile offices with small creature comforts: a kitchen, lockers stocked with the fireproof gear drivers and pit crew wear and the driver’s lounge area. The race car is transported in a compartment on top of each trailer.
The cars are immediately unloaded and inspected by NASCAR for compliance. All teams can bring two spare cars, but once NASCAR has “impounded” a car, Hendrick Motorsports President Andrews said, “it means NASCAR has given its seal of approval … now we cannot make any changes to it.”
Later on Saturday came the qualifying times where drivers competed to get the best starting positions for Sunday. Byron qualified in the sixth position, Elliott in ninth, Larson in 16th and Bowman in 19th.
“We want to have all our drivers in the top 10 starting spots, so Kyle and Alex have some work to do,” Andrews said. “But it’s not insurmountable.”
Pit crews matter
Last Sunday was rainy, and it kept coming, causing a 1-hour, 43-minute delay to the start of the race. NASCAR sent trucks equipped with massive heated blowers onto the track to dry it.
During the delay, Barnette babies his back, while others in the pit crew do pushups or lunges. Hendrick and his GM guests sit in the pit box with driver Larson and his crew chief, Cliff Daniels. Soon, driver William Byron climbs the ladder and takes a seat too.
Everyone is relaxed, though a subterranean intensity lingers as each keeps an eye on the radar screen to see when green patches indicating rain would move out of the area.
Byron, who, at 25, is Hendrick’s youngest driver, and Larson, 30, have an easy rapport despite being competitors on the track. They are also teammates who manage to navigate that line with ease. Larson calls Byron “Willie” while others address him as William. They talk about their vacation plans. Byron asks Larson his strategy for this race. Larson says he’ll look to stay in the middle of the track, not go high or too close to the inside wall. Byron agrees with that strategy.
Byron is one of the top-ranked drivers in NASCAR and was leading in points going into the Michigan race. He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, idolizing Hendrick’s former champion driver, Jimmie Johnson. Byron says Sunday he learned to race at age 14 on a race car simulating game and the skill “translated” to the real thing. Byron’s car is sponsored by Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he is taking online college classes to prepare for life after racing, he said. But right now, Byron said, he is living his dream.
The conversation in the box shifts to the importance of the pit crew.
“It really matters,” Byron says. “If they hit my left side tire fast, I know it’s gonna be a good pit stop. In years past, we’d struggle, but not this year.”
He and Larson laugh about a time they participated in pit stop practice just for fun. Oh, it was a joke all right, they say. Larson is about 5 feet 6 and Byron about 5 feet 9. Both are fit athletes, but lack the brawn needed to jack up a car in a hurry or run around a pit with 95 pounds of gasoline. Their skill lies in having steady nerves at high speeds knowing there’s the possibility of a crash at any moment. And when they are in a wreck, Byron is unfazed by it because, he said, “It’s quick.”
Recruiting from college for pit crews
For more than a decade, Hendrick Motorsports has been recruiting pit crew members from college athletic programs. The pit crew are treated the same as top athletes. They have access to a full weight room, a training staff, a dietitian, a yoga instructor and a physical therapist at Hendrick Motorsports campus.
The average pit crew member earns $30,000 to $100,000 a year, according to an article in NASCAR Chronicle. A spokesman for the Hendrick group said this range is accurate, and would include NASCAR’s three major touring series — Trucks, xFinity and NASCAR Cup Series. This salary can vary depending on experience, a team’s success, and any sponsorship deals that the team may have, the article said. But the money is hard-earned.
“We typically work out three to four days a week here on campus as a team and we travel nearly every weekend,” said Calvin Teague, the rear tire changer for Larson’s team. “So we’re working five to seven days a week, whether it’s traveling, doing pit stop practice and film reviews and training.”
On a typical Tuesday morning, the crew gathers at a makeshift pit stop at Hendrick Motorsports campus. A team member drives a race car into the pit stop and the pit crew does a full service as if it were a real race. Then repeat. Each practice pit stop is timed and filmed so that the crew can review it to determine ways to shave off even a millisecond. The goal is to be under 10 seconds.
Once a week, the pit crew does “heat training,” Teague said. It’s a high-intensity workout in the heat to prepare them for peak summer months where it can get up to 120 degrees on pit road, “and you’re wearing a fire suit,” Teague said.
Brandon Harder, 40, Larson’s fueler, has been doing it for 17 years and he will retire when his body can’t do it anymore.
“I always told myself I don’t want to be the weak link on the team,” Harder said. “So the day I feel I am falling apart or not as competitive, I’ll put my hand up and move on.”
Rain delay ends, so back to the track
As Sunday’s rain delay nears its end, Daniels, the crew chief, suddenly turns to Larson in the pit box and says, “Kyle, go to your car!” The race is finally starting.
Four minutes later, nearly three dozen drivers are strapped in. On the headset, one of Hendrick’s crew chiefs tells the drivers, “You can fire it up.” All the engines rumble and boom to life. The floor and seats in the pit box shake and the rain weary crowd roars with excitement.
One by one, the cars peel out of pit road behind the Chevrolet Camaro pace car. After a few laps around the track, the pace car peels away and the race starts. The cars immediately accelerate to top speeds.
“We’re rollin’,” a crew chief says on the headsets before asking Byron, “How’s the track look?”
At a speed estimated to be over 180 mph, Byron calmly replies, “It looks good.”
That’s an ‘oh crap’ moment
Rick Hendrick is relaxed. He’s a calm and soft-spoken man by nature. He sits placidly watching the race.
Driver Ross Chastain, from another team, is leading in a No. 1 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. Hendrick isn’t worried. He knows it’s early and his drivers have a good shot. But just 14 laps into the race, Kyle Busch, who drives the No. 8 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for team owner Richard Childress, spins out and hits a wall. Hendrick flinches, concern crossing his face.
After he realizes it was an opponent’s car, he leans over and says, “That’s an ‘oh crap’ moment,” worried that it might be one of his drivers.
The crash draws all the drivers in for their first pit stop. Hendrick stands to lean over the edge of the pit box to watch. He is pleased as the injured Barnette and company are one of the fastest teams on pit road that day.
Then a real “oh, crap” moment happens. His driver, Chase Elliott, is in lap 34 when a tire blows and he loses control of Hendrick’s No. 9 Nappa Chevrolet. The car careens off the outside retaining wall. Elliott had moved into ninth in the 37-car field, but the car now is too damaged to continue and he’s out of the race.
Hendrick sits silent and stoic for a minute. Then, without a word, he gets up and leaves the pit box. He goes to find Elliott.
“I told him, ‘We’ve got good races coming up and you can take it,’ ” Hendrick says later. “You want him to look past this and onto the next race. But this really hurt because he was in a good spot to gain points for the playoffs.”
Because Elliott missed six races with a broken leg this year, he has to catch up on points. He needs to win one of the last three races before Aug. 26 to qualify for a spot in the postseason, which starts Sept. 3 and culminates on Nov. 5 at Phoenix Raceway in Arizona, where a 2023 champion will be crowned.
“He was good today. But that’s the way it happens,” Hendrick says of Elliott. “As long as the driver’s not hurt, we’re good.”
‘A real rough day’
Byron gets in 12 more laps than Elliott did before scraping the outside wall on the final lap of Stage 1. He drives the No. 24 Chevy to pit road, but the car is too damaged to continue and his day ends.
Soon, Hendrick’s Bowman is able to capture the lead in the race, but slips to No. 2 when Christopher Bell passes him in a Toyota in lap 65.
“Get up, get up, get up!” a crew chief yells into Bowman’s ear over the headset, and immediately Bowman steers his car to the highest part of the track’s embankment to disrupt Tyler Reddick’s momentum behind him. Bowman secures second place just as Bell spins and hits the wall. Because of the spin-out, Bowman retains the top spot as they head into a caution. Reddick, in a Toyota, is in second and — more good news for Team Hendrick — Larson has moved into third.
NASCAR restarts the race and Reddick passes Bowman for the lead. The field holds that way until they put the race under caution at lap 74 because of rain. It was Reddick in the lead, Bowman second and Larson third at the time of the delay and news that the finish of the race is pushed to Monday due to weather.
“Been a real rough day,” Hendrick says, turning to Andrews and adding, “but I’m real proud of Alex (Bowman).”
Alas, on Monday, Bowman also crashed and was out of contention, leaving only Larson to finish fifth in the final standings for the Hendrick team at the Firekeepers Casino 400.
Pit crew can make or break a race
Larson and his team are good at coming from behind. Take the 2021 NASCAR championship race at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona.
“That was one of the best moments I ever felt in the sport,” said Barnette, who started working for Hendrick on the pit crew rather than pursue a teaching career. He graduated in 2009 from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, where he played defensive back on the football team.
In 2021, Larson was in fourth place competing for the championship when he rushed into pit road for a final stop near the end of the race. The pressure was on those guys.
“We had a great pit stop,” said Teague, the rear tire changer. He is currently injured, so Rod Cox filled in for him Sunday. “But it wasn’t just us. The road crew and the mechanics played a big role too. They pull hoses and roll tires for us. And that stop, everything went perfect.”
So perfect, Larson was able to gain three spots after the pit stop, which put him in position to win.
“We wanted to gain a spot, but we didn’t anticipate going straight to the lead,” Barnette said. “When we looked down pit road and saw that we’d be the first ones out, that was surreal. We knew Kyle, all he had to do was hold them off.”
He did and he won the championship.
“It was really cool,” Larson said on Sunday, saying he was nervous and excited at the same time as he headed toward the finish in 2021 knowing he was in the lead. “You dream of winning them and I knew then that I had a really good shot.”
It’s for that dream and those moments that Barnette keeps showing up to work. His back injury isn’t his first injury. In 2018, he tore his pectoral muscle in his chest and was out for 10 months. He also has been bumped by a race car a few times during his 14 years on pit road.
Still he wouldn’t trade it for the world because he likes the competition, and, “jumping out in front of a car is fun. It’s an adrenaline rush.”
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.