4 Tires & Fuel: Consistency Shines Through with Importance of Track Position

The curvature of pit road at Phoenix Raceway can be tricky for drivers and crews alike, but that didn't stop one crew from Joe Gibbs Racing from putting on another dominant performance and topping both the individual pit stop and median pit stop time charts this week.

In Sunday's Shriners Children's 500, there were 138 pit stops in which four tires were changed, and once again times were blazing quick - with 36 of those pit stops clocking in at 10 seconds or less. The median time for a four-tire change in the event was 10.59 seconds.

Best Individual Pit Stops

The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing crew, with driver Denny Hamlin, was in rare form on Sunday, setting the fastest four-tire pit stop of the event once again with a 9.00-second heater.

Sunday at Phoenix, the Spire Motorsports pit crew working on the No. 7 Chevrolet of Corey LaJoie was on their heels with a 9.2-second four-tire pit stop. The organization leases that crew from Hendrick Motorsports, making it more impressive that they were able to beat the Hendrick in-house crews, who made multiple appearances on the top-10 individual pit stop chart.

Similar to last weekend at Las Vegas, crews from Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports are crowded toward the top of the sheet. However, there is some new blood, with the No. 24 (William Byron) and No. 23 (Bubba Wallace) crews jumping into the top-five with stops in the 9.40-second range.

Furthermore, the No. 12 (Ryan Blaney) and No. 4 (Josh Berry) pit crews made appearances at the tail-end of the top-10, with pit stops clocking in at 9.58 and 9.78 seconds, respectively.

Median Four Tire Pit Stop Speeds

While individual pit stop speeds can be helpful for immediate track position, it's the consistency over multiple stops that usually wins races, and once again the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing crew is leading the charts in that respect.

The crew showed amazing consistency all afternoon and utilized the first pit stall to their advantage with a media four-tire change time of 9.10 seconds -- with the median time clocking in just a tenth of a second slower than their best.

Spire Motorsports had their No. 7 crew amped up on Sunday, as the team was within a few tenths of their fastest time of the afternoon with a 9.49-second median four-tire change.

Hicks is a multi-time Pit Crew Challenge winner and is notable for his flexibility in getting around the fuel when coming around the rear. Outside of his racing activities, he's the crew chief and mechanic for his daughter who races at various dirt tracks in the southeast.

Edwards is a Daytona 500 champion and one of the best in the series on the jack, mentoring young athletes in his spare time. The rest of the squad is younger, but over the last few years, they've been able to meet the challenge from Hicks and Edwards to consistently be some of the fastest on pit lane.

Misses Of The Race

While the No. 3 pit crew made the top-10 for median pit stop times on Sunday, the same cannot be said for their teammates on the No. 8 crew who found themselves at the bottom of the median times, once again.

Heading to Phoenix, Richard Childress Racing replaced the majority of the No. 8 pit crew of Kyle Busch, but unfortunately, that didn't do much to help things, as they were still stuck towards the bottom of the rankings, with a median stop time of 11.39 seconds.

The most notable entry on this list is probably the No. 54 (Ty Gibbs), whose four-tire average was brought down mostly due to a mishap on the right rear, which resulted in a stop of more than 14 seconds. There was a similar situation for the No. 42 LEGACY MOTOR CLUB crew where they damaged the threads on the right rear during an early stop, slowing down their stop for the remainder of the race.

Things will be heating up even further as crews head to Bristol this weekend, where the intensity will get ramped up in the tight confines of short-track racing, as drivers battle for track position and try to stay on the lead lap. Pit crews will be integral to the race result and fast pit stops can result in gains of multiple spots which will be hard to get on track.