Daytona 500: St. Johns County natives jacked up to crew for John Hunter Nemechek
By Don Coble
DAYTONA BEACH – If there are no mistakes, it only takes Chris Shuman and Matt Schlytter about 10 seconds to do their jobs.
The
rest of their full-time work focuses on trimming valuable tenths of seconds off
the time it takes to service John Hunter Nemechek’s Toyota during a pit stop.
Schlytter
is the jackman, also known as the quarterback, for the No. 42 Legacy Motor Club
team, while Shuman changes the rear tires. When Nemechek’s car screeches to a stop, both launch over the pit wall and run around to the right side of the car, where Schlytter uses a specialty-made jack to hoist the 3,450-pound car off the ground. Simultaneously,
Shuman will drop to his knees and hit the single-lug nut with an impact wrench.
The car will lift, and the tire will come off simultaneously. The tire carrier
will put a new tire in place, ensuring the pins align with the drive pins.
Shuman then must torque down the lug nut.
After
that, both must run around the car and repeat the process on the left side of
the car.
All
in less than 11 seconds.
At
a race like Sunday’s Daytona 500 (1:30 p.m., FOX), a one-second mistake on pit
road translates to 100 yards lost on the track. And for Shuman and Schlytter, there
is extra incentive to keep Nemechek upfront because they consider Daytona
their home track.
Nemechek
will start 18th in the Great American Race.
Shuman
grew up in St. Augustine and attended Mill Creek Elementary, while Schlytter is
from Ponte Vedra Beach. Both now live in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area,
but their roots are embedded in St. Johns County.
Stops
used to be performed by shop workers, but now they’re done by highly toned
athletes who do nothing but work pit stops.
“Some
teams get their crews from places like Joe Gibbs Racing
“They may not have enough money to run or enough sponsorship to pay for them
to get to the track, to pay the shop guys and the road guys, it may not be
feasible to pay the salaries of the pit crew guys,” Shuman said. “Pit crews are
so specialized now, and it could cost upwards of $600,000 for one team, so it
makes sense for some teams to get their pit crews from somewhere else.
“The
problem is you don’t have to practice a car. You technically don’t have to go
to the gym to make sure their bodies are in physical shape, things like that.
It makes more sense for smaller teams to rent them out. Unfortunately, you just
don’t always get the best guys.”
Legacy
hired full-time crews to service cars for Nemechek and the No. 43 for Eric
Jones. When they aren’t at the racetrack, they’re either working out, perfecting
their choreography-like pit stop routines or doing odd jobs around the shop.
Shuman
said his family toured the race shops in Charlotte during a vacation when he
was young. His father took a brochure advertising a pit crew school from one.
Months later, he moved the family to the Piedmont so he could chase his dream
of being in NASCAR.
“Actually,
my grandfather had a hand in building World Golf Village,” Shuman said. “We
moved to North Carolina when I was in fifth grade. He was a mechanic and got a tire carrier job for a couple races, but it just didn’t work out for
him.”
Shuman
said he wanted to be like his father. He became a mechanic, and he also went to
pit crew school. But unlike his dad, his interest wasn’t turning wrenches. It
was pitting cars.
“It
worked out. I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “A coach
found me from Michael Waltrip Racing in 2012, and that's where it all started.”
Schlytter
said he’s always been athletic and competitive. He said pumping a jack under the pressure of a NASCAR pit stop feeds both needs.
“I
was a student-athlete my entire life,” Schlytter said. “Sitting behind a desk
was just weird. I knew I wanted to get into NASCAR after I found out that this
was actually a thing with being on a pit crew, my love for motorsports and
being able to be physically active again. Being an athlete was just a
merge of two loves, and it would be tough because I was starting over
from scratch.”
He
said the jackman is the quarterback of the pit crew because the driver’s cue to
leave is the moment he drops the jack.
“You're
not only a part of the group, but you're also having to oversee everybody
else's position simultaneously,” he said. “You have to make sure all tasks
are complete. Everything is tight there. There’s a little pressure there,
but I like that.”
Teams
will get one final chance to shake down their cars on Saturday for 50 minutes,
starting at 3:05 p.m.
NASCAR moved Sunday’s race up an hour because of the potential of inclement weather
later in the day. The new start time is 1:30 p.m.
