Crews must work together on pit road for clean race (cont'd)

"It's not that formal, it's an unspoken thing, if my stuff gets into your pits, you knock it down and get it stopped -- it won't happen again and I'll talk to my guys," Kerr said. "[At Atlanta], it was just coming in the wrong direction and the guy, it hit him in the shoulder and he shoved it away.

"Nobody does anything intentional -- at least I hope not. It just happened, it was a misfortune and it cost all of us on the race track."

“

It's not that formal, it's an unspoken thing, if my stuff gets into your pits, you knock it down and get it stopped -- it won't happen again and I'll talk to my guys.

”

-- FRANK KERR

David Stremme's No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge crew chief Roy McCauley is apparently one of the more outgoing men in the fraternity, because he said he always gets together with the crew chiefs located on either side of his box.

"Oh yeah, sure you do -- you absolutely do," McCauley said. "You try to help each other out as much as you can. Everybody does get along very well [but] there's going to be controversy on pit road, no matter what. Somebody's always going to be in somebody else's way -- that happens.

"But teams get along real well along pit lane, in my opinion, with all that goes on. I don't really think there are any problems on pit lane. I've seen teams grab my tire before it got away, just like my guys have grabbed other teams' tires. It's give and take, everywhere you go, and it's never one team against another."

Berrier said that potential issues with equipment or tight quarters, as is the case at Bristol or next weekend at Martinsville Speedway, never come up with him.

"We don't talk about potential problems, in general, but we do talk about when we're going to pit," Berrier said. "If we're going to pit under caution and we're running behind someone, or vice versa and they're behind us and we're in opposing pit stalls, we'll talk about us pitting short [in the pit box] and them pitting long [to separate the cars]."

Carter agreed that common courtesy, rather than going out of their way to talk things out, worked for most of his crew chief brethren.

"We don't really get together," Carter said. "We just try to talk to our guys about, if something happens just try to help other teams out because there might come a time where we'll need some help. So we try to let everybody know that we're there to help everybody that's around us and then, that way if we're in a situation where we need some help then maybe we can get it.

"It's pretty much a case of mutual respect and taking care of those guys, hoping they'll take care of you."

Berrier described episodes in his career of the exact situation as occurred at Atlanta.

"You try to be pretty cordial to 'em and you try to work with them the best that you can, but several times for us in the past, we didn't get our tire back [to pit wall]," Berrier said. "Somebody on another team, either behind us or in front of us has taken off running around the car and would actually run into it and send it sailing and you have to go after it. I guess it's your responsibility, but you've got to work together because quarters are pretty tight."

As with athletes in other professional sports, focus appears to be a key with over-the-wall crewmen particularly. Berrier said it's been years since he's had to speak with his crew about getting overly emotional during a race.

"Our guys have been doing it together for so long that they're pretty much on it," Berrier said. "They know what to do and they feel worse about stuff when stuff goes to happening and you don't really have to say a whole lot to 'em because they pretty much feel just as bad as anybody when something does go wrong.

"They're pretty good at rebounding but that's just the luxury of having a group of people that's been together and doing it a long time."

"We're always going to try to stay under control and not let what happens on pit road really dictate our emotions or get us mad, or whatever," Carter said. "We just try to do our own deal."

"As a crew chief, you're a cheerleader, too," Kerr said. "And you have to say 'hey guys, you made a mistake, let's recover, what's done is done and let's go on and do what we gotta do.'"

But pit road's pressure can't be minimized, McCauley said of sometimes having to calm his guys down.

"Sure you do," McCauley said. "They're professional athletes, to a degree, so you need to keep everybody pumped up, or calmed down, or whatever you need to do. It's no different than being a head coach somewhere.

"Those guys get psyched up, they're aggressive and they try to do the best they can on pit lane and they do a great job, for the most part."

And if problems arise, the intense, but low-key Berrier said he has a simple solution after qualifying, when crew chiefs pick their pit locations.

"The ones that you have trouble with," he said, smiling, "you do your best not to pick around."