'Papa' a pioneer in pit crew conditioning and safety

Inside a small room within ear shot of the gym at the Hendrick Motorsports compound, where staffers require golf carts to get to-and-fro, Andy Papathanassiou is pouring over films of pit stops.

He's looking at the way his crewmen move around the car, he's watching the knees of the tire changer crash onto the cement; he's watching how much back and quad strength the jack man is using to elevate the car.

Risky business

Life in the pits is full of danger but as time goes on, teams are learning how to take care of the ones who take care of their car.

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They call him "Papa" for short and they call on him to keep the championship pit crews in top shape and injury free. They call on him to coach the crew in order to shave seconds off pit stops and they call on him because he's the best -- he's the first.

And how he became the first pit crew coordinator is more than interesting.

Before the early 1990s, pit crew safety and performance were low priority. They wore the same knee pads as volleyball players which would wear thin by the third or fourth pit stop. As for helmets; forget about it. Those didn't come into play until 2002 after a crew member was seriously injured.

Papa is a product of Stanford, a West Coast Ivy League institution known to produce executives and dignitaries.

Not Papa, a three-sport athlete, he wanted to work in the industry. And, in true NASCAR fashion, he had to start at the bottom, despite his expensive education.

He helped teams by sweeping floors, cleaning cars and gave unsolicited advice to team owners on how to improve their pit stops by coaching crewmen. At races, he would tug on crew members pant legs while under the car and say, 'hey lets go practice, lets' go work out.'

"I saw a pit crew, and to me, it looked like a football play," Papa recalled. "Like football, we had a daily practice plan graphed out in increments. The horn was blowing every five minutes to do different drills, group drills, individual drills and we sort of did the same thing here."

And by here he means Hendrick Motorsports, the facility where iconic crew chief (now team owner) Ray Evernham worked to create Jeff Gordon's pit crew in 1992.

Evernham was the first to hire a pit crew coordinator.

Papa was elated to take the job and leave the now defunct Whitcomb Racing where he was only making $300 a week.

Before Papa, crews didn't practice and rarely saw the inside of a gym so he and Evernham were setting the bar for pit stop performance.

The crew members were now being trained like stick and ball athletes.

"We had tire changers hitting lug nuts, not even using air, just tapping them creating muscle memory," he said. "The pit area is now more athletically oriented. I knew pit stops could be quicker, they were 19 seconds back then."

Today: a stop averages 13 to 14 seconds.

Crew members don't wear volleyball knee pads and mechanics' shirts like they did in the past. They wear fire suits, high-tech flame retardant underwear and shock absorbing knee pads.

Papa's major focus now is injury prevention and human performance, keeping his crew injury free because logistically teams can't bring a back-up jack man -- like a back up quarterback -- to every race. It's not feasible or affordable.

They avoid the more frequent injuries, shoulders, knees, ligaments, through special training and strength and conditioning.

And while Papa does his best to eliminate injury, he can't do much to eliminate the danger.

"There's only so much you can do to take the danger out of the job. In the late 1980s, there was no speed limit on pit road and gas men were the only ones who wore helmets, so I'm happy with the safety advancements NASCAR has created to ensure pit road safety."

Because it's the crewmen who get bumped and banged more than drivers, but it's the man behind the wheel fans know by face and first name, not the man with the air gun or the car jack.

But Papa, in his own way, has brought these unsung heroes and the athleticism of a pit crew to the forefront and shined the limelight on them for a change.

Deservedly so, because behind every good driver is a better pit crew -- just ask two-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.