4 Tires & Fuel: Big Changes Highlight Pit Crew Rankings After Dover

Pit lane in the NASCAR Cup Series has been extremely competitive this season but there have been a few crews that have stood out above and beyond the rest. The clear leaders for the season are the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing crew of Denny Hamlin as they have been able to show both speed and consistency this season and helped lead Hamlin to multiple victories.

Once again, we're taking a look at all of the top crews in the Cup series and ranking them based on a formula that includes median four tire change time and average four tire change time along with a small factor for those that have had the fastest stops of the year. This is the second edition of the Bozi Pit Crew Index (BPCI) for this season and is the result of examining 1,700 four-tire change pit stops that have been completed so far.

The top two spots look familiar as the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing crew of Denny Hamlin leads the chart and is closely followed by the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports crew of Chase Elliott but we start to see some shake-ups as we go down the list and see that all of the Hendrick crews are finding their groove as they occupy four of the top five spots.

One of the biggest movers is the No. 5 crew of Kyle Larson as they were previously outside of the top 10 but now sit comfortably in third. They are followed by their teammates on the No. 48 and No. 24 crews who have both moved up since the last time we looked at all of the stops for the season. The No. 6 RFK Racing crew of Brad Keselowski has dropped a few spots down to 6th but they have been fairly consistent and the ground lost is more due to fact that some of the Hendrick crews have gotten better and ahead of them as the season has progressed.

We see another huge move in seventh place as the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing crew of Martin Truex Jr. has moved up all the way from 15th and they are followed by the two Trackhouse Racing crews who are performing roughly equally when looking at season-long numbers. The top 10 is rounded out by the No. 22 Penske pit crew of Joey Logano as they take that spot away from their teammates on the No. 12 car who drop to eleventh place by just a handful of points.

We see that groups from the No. 3, No. 14, and No. 20 have dropped a few spots since our initial rankings and are now just outside of the top 10 but we also see some new appearances putting a few points on the board like the No. 23 pit crew of Bubba Wallace at 23XI Racing and the No. 17 RFK Racing pit crew of Chris Buescher.

Fastest Pit Stops of the Season

We place a heavy weight on consistency when ranking pit crews but pit stops continue to get faster and they are so fast that a nine-second pit stop wouldn't even place a crew on the top 15 charts. These are the fastest ones completed so far in the 2024 season.

Once again, it's no surprise to see the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports crew at the top along with the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing crew as they have been some of the most dominant this season. Hendrick Motorsports has the strongest showing on the chart as all four of their in-house crews make an appearance along with the two crews they have leased out to Spire Motorsports. Three of the four Joe Gibbs Racing crews also make an appearance with Team Penske and Stewart-Haas getting a couple of their teams on the board.

Second Quarter Averages

We saw quite a few teams make moves on the BPCI charts above and much of that is fueled by their recent performance. The second quarter of the season started out with the Cook Out 400 so let's look at some of the best performers since that race at Martinsville. These are the leaders for average pit stop times for the second quarter so far:

Hendrick Motorsports shows its dominance once again along with the usual appearances from Joe Gibbs Racing but there are some fun surprises in this chart. The No. 23 crew of Bubba Wallace is the highest ranked behind those HMS crews as they slot into fifth with their teammates on the No. 45 of Tyler Reddick joining the list just outside of the top 10. The biggest surprises have to be the two Richard Childress Racing Crews that are on the list as the No. 33 crew is made up of part-timers since it only runs occasionally but the No. 8 of Kyle Busch making the list after their troubles early in the year shows a huge improvement for that crew.

Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing are still the pit departments to beat but we'll be following closely as other teams get an opportunity to prove themselves this month at the Pit Crew Challenge at North Wilkesboro and show us if they can unseat the leaders.

Photo Credit: Will Bellamy, Racing America