Did You Notice?: Teams Reducing Time on Pit Road With Jackman Maneuvers?

Did You Notice? … Teams are finding ways to reduce time on pit road by asking their jackmen to be more agile?

Each member of the pit crew is equally important, and once the five crewmen jump over the wall, they can make or break an entire race. Each crew also has their own unique rhythm, and getting into a perfect flow can bring stop times down and help the driver gain track position.

A pit stop can only be so quick. After all, it will inevitably take a set amount of time to run around the car, unscrew two of the tires and bolt a new pair on before running back around to the other side of the car.

One area where teams are changing their pit stop flow to shorten time, though, is with the jackman.

During a traditional pit stop, the jackman puts the jack under the car and pushes down to lift the car up. He then puts the front tire in place just after the tire changer removes it. Once the lug nut goes back on the wheel, the jackman drops the jack and runs to the other side of the car.

This is where it’s time to pay attention. In an average pit stop, the jackman returns to the jack and picks it up, running with the jack out front, sometimes even having to lift it extra high to clear the nose of the car. See the example below from Ryan Blaney’s pit crew at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Speaking of traditional stops, here is an example from the Blaney crew at Bristol: pic.twitter.com/QKIhmebIpX

— Caleb Barnes (@calebbarnes_) April 22, 2025

This traditional technique is used by the majority of crews in the garage, and nearly all of the teams in the Ford group pit their cars this way. Some teams saw the jackman area as one to improvise and subsequently shave a few tenths of a second off their stop.

A new technique entered the spotlight two weeks ago after Denny Hamlin won his first race of the season at Martinsville Speedway. See in the video below if you can notice a difference in the technique the jackman uses.

At Bristol, I first went to the 11 pit, since their crew was talk of the garage.

Here’s an up-close look of their stop: pic.twitter.com/PxwDGEFyUA

— Caleb Barnes (@calebbarnes_) April 22, 2025

If you caught it — or if you’ve seen other conversations about it — the jackman grabs the jack with his left hand and does a nifty behind-the-back move to change hands while running around the car. Hamlin discussed the move after Martinsville on his podcast Actions Detrimental. 

The following week, his crew delivered another quick stop to put the No. 11 out front and in position to win at Darlington Raceway.

“To be honest, I wish it didn’t get as much hype as it did,” Joe Gibbs Racing Director of Competition Chris Gabehart said after that race. “What it takes to gain an advantage in any part of this sport now is so hard to do.

“We have some things we need to work on to kind of make sure we don’t give stuff away, but the way it worked out for today is awesome, because what it did was spotlight an incredibly special group of people in that pit crew.”

One of those people is Joel Bouagnon, the jackman for that No. 11 team. Frontstretch’s Dalton Hopkins talked to him after the Darlington win.

“Our crew, we’re so hungry for that,” Bouagnon told Frontstretch. “That is why we show up. That’s why we’re here. To execute a move like that, it takes a lot of practice, and it takes a lot of practice in big situations as well.”

While the No. 11 crew has taken the spotlight after their back-to-back wins, the move actually came from the 23XI Racing crews. In a Saturday press conference at Bristol, Hamlin — the team co-owner — praised his crews.

“A lot of the tricky things that you see on pit road these days came actually from 23XI,” Hamlin said. “There’s a lot of things they’re really being innovative in, and certainly it’s exciting to see it kind of play out on Sundays.

“You have to be great. You can’t just talk about it. We really feel like we’re taking the next step, and the pit crew is the next step for that organization to get better.”

According to NASCAR Insights, nobody is better on pit road than the No. 23 crew right now.

“They know the work they’re putting in is finally paying off,” Bubba Wallace told Frontstretch at Bristol. “It’s been just really cool to see and obviously awesome to be able to be in situations where they deliver in spots where we need them to.”

Let’s now get a lineup of where we’re at now with this new behind-the-back stop. It was developed over at 23XI, which means the crews for Wallace, Tyler Reddick and Riley Herbst are using the move.

Joe Gibbs Racing has mainly adopted the move in three of its four crews, the ones pitting for Hamlin, Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs.

The No. 20 crew for Christopher Bell has used the new technique during stops at times this year. However, the team went back to the more traditional pit stop — which they’re still really fast at — in the past two races.

Here is the 20 crew going behind the back at Martinsville, then going traditional two weeks later at Bristol

(If you can see the hands and the jack, that is. Pixelated screenshots are the best I can do lol) pic.twitter.com/8F9edjSsrP

— Caleb Barnes (@calebbarnes_) April 22, 2025

There is also a non-Toyota team who I’ve spotted trying out the behind-the-back move. I’m not sure if both Richard Childress Racing crews do it, but Kyle Busch’s No. 8 pit crew has enacted the technique at multiple races this year.

With two techniques down, there is still a third, very rare technique to watch for. It should be pretty easy to spot, too, because it’s used by two of the best teams in the field.

Once I observed (and filmed) the Hamlin and Blaney stops, I wanted to find out if the No. 5 crew had adjusted their pit stop. After all, it’s a common practice that once one team finds a small advantage, other teams try to replicate it, like when Joe Gibbs Racing attempted to change the way their tires ran around the car.

At first playback, I saw the jack swinging and assumed the crew had quickly adopted the new technique. But closer examination showed a different approach from the other two teams. See in the video below if you can pick it out.

There is a third type of stop employed by just a few teams on pit road. Take a look at this one from the 5 team: pic.twitter.com/oO3Ni1KUJ6

— Caleb Barnes (@calebbarnes_) April 22, 2025

If you watch the jackman, he hangs the tire as normal. He then turns his back on the car, reaching with his right hand, and drops the jack before running forward and to the other side. This technique eliminates the need to change hands while running around the car.

This technique was used by both the Nos. 5 and 24 crews, but the other two Hendrick Motorsports teams used the traditional stop once again. 

Upon further review, the technique first appeared in 2023, and the No. 24 team has been using it since the start of the 2024 season.

With three techniques, which one is faster? 

According to a graphic shown during the Bristol race on FOX Sports 1, five of the 10 fastest crews currently use the traditional stop. That includes one JGR team and two Hendrick teams. In fact, the Hendrick teams that pit traditionally are ranked sixth and ninth, while the teams with the unique stops are seventh and 10th.

At the same time, three of the four fastest crews on pit road employ the behind-the-back technique developed in the offseason.

Though pit stops take up a fraction of time in the grand scheme of a race, quick crews — and quicker jackmen — can make a large impact on a race outcome. It’s something to watch for next time your favorite driver’s crew goes over the wall.

Did You Notice? … Quick hits before taking off … 

• Despite dominating at Bristol Motor Speedway, Larson did not lay down the fastest lap of the race. That was set by AJ Allmendinger. Only once this season has the driver with the fastest lap ended up in victory lane, and that was when Hamlin won Martinsville. Allmendinger and Michael McDowell are tied for the most fastest laps this season with two apiece, both getting theirs at a superspeedway and a short track (if you count Phoenix Raceway as a short track, that is).
• The NASCAR Xfinity Series put on a show at Rockingham Speedway. I’m sure you saw that. What might surprise you is that the series has not had an off week yet this season. The series goes to Talladega Superspeedway and Texas Motor Speedway before its first break of the season: a two-week hiatus. Racing 12 consecutive weeks to start the year is the longest start to an Xfinity season ever.