Roush teams need better pit stops for track position

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- As the competition on the track has become more balanced, track position has become more critical. And the fastest way to gain -- or lose -- is on pit road.

Like having a dominant closer in baseball, a football place-kicker who can split the uprights with seconds left on the clock, or a basketball star who can coolly sink free throws under pressure, having a pit crew with perfect synchronization has become imperative for the top teams in NASCAR's premier series.

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That's never been more obvious than in recent weeks, particularly at Jack Roush's operation. Brandon Hopkins was hired this week to handle tire changing for Carl Edwards' No. 99 Ford, following a frustrating late-race stop at Texas that might have cost Edwards any chance at victory.

It's something that the driver said has been happening with increasing frequency.

"The fact is that we can all say woulda, shoulda, coulda or whatever, but there are like five to eight races over my career in Cup that I feel like we would have won if it weren't for trouble that we had on pit road," Edwards said Friday at Phoenix International Raceway. "That's a lot of races. I can only imagine that guys just love it when we have yellow flags because they know they can pass me on pit road, so it's just very frustrating.

"The crazy thing is I talk to [Roush Fenway Racing general manager] Robbie Reiser about it and he's doing everything he can. He threw up his hands and said, 'Carl, I've never seen a situation like this where if it's not one thing it's another.' If it's not someone having a bad day, it's an injury. It's not like there's just one thing we can say, 'Alright, we're gonna change this and now we'll be great. It's just one of those circumstances and I hope that we can get all of this out of the way and be good in the Chase and be good in the future because this sport is becoming so competitive you have to have all parts of it working well."

Edwards' teammate, Matt Kenseth, has had his share of pit-road woes, too. Considered one of the best in the business, flubbed stops at Martinsville and Texas doomed the No. 17 Ford to finishes not representative of how well the car ran during the race.

"Track position is very, very important," Kenseth said. "My team has always historically done really well. Without our pit stops in Daytona and California, we wouldn't have been in position to win either one of those races and they really helped us win those races, but then on the other hand we've had a few off weeks on pit road, too.

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"At Martinsville, we lost our lap on pit road and could never get it back and that hurt us, and last week we went from second to 12th or something like that with having a nut fall off the right-rear and that hurt us. So it kind of goes both ways. We know we've got to be perfect to be able to win these days -- on the track, on pit road, car prep, everything -- so the pressure is always on. The pressure is always on for nobody to make a mistake because the competition is so tough that if you make any mistakes, it's gonna be tough to overcome them and still be able to have a shot to win."

Kenseth said for his team, something as simple as a change in the length of the wheel studs -- the posts where the lug nuts are attached -- has changed the delicate interplay that comes from hours and hours of pit-stop practice.

"[NASCAR] changed the rules on the stud lengths and I think that's probably the biggest thing that is different for our tire changers because that changes the timing a little bit," Kenseth said. "You have to be on the nuts longer to get them tight and I think the shoulder has changed a little bit on it. ... I can't really speak to anybody else, but I know that's been one of the challenges that we really had to look at this winter when they made that rules change -- to practice pit stops and you have to be on them longer, so that's really been the only change.

"It's really competitive out on the track and it's really competitive on pit road and whenever you're trying that hard to turn in the perfect stop, once in a while you're gonna have mistakes or have things not go quite right, so you're just trying to push it that extra little bit."

Great pit stops go hand-in-hand with pit-stall selection, which is why qualifying up front is still part of the equation. Kenseth was fifth-fastest and Edwards' 17th in the morning practice for Saturday night's Subway Fresh Fit 500. In the afternoon Happy Hour session, the fastest of the Fords was Jamie McMurray, who was eighth on the leaderboard behind three-time winner Jimmie Johnson's Chevrolet.

In a flurry of last-minute mock qualifying runs, Johnson's fastest lap was 132.236 mph, edging out Juan Montoya. The rest of the top five included Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch.

So with several changes to his pit crew this weekend, Edwards faces an uncertain short-term future when cars come in for service. In this competitive environment, finding a comfortable constant is key, and perhaps this is the move that provides a settling influence.

"I hope that our new tire changer does well," he said. "I wish we were going to Talladega first and not here because it's gonna be imperative to have great pit stops and it could be pivotal if you have a bad one. I wish we weren't starting him right here at Phoenix, but you never know, he might perform very, very well."