Frank Kimmel won his eighth...
Frank Kimmel won his eighth ARCA championship last year with the help of an over-the-wall crew from Pit Instruction & Training. PIT Courtesy Photo
Charlie Pecht went to the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show last December looking for a job in motorsports. The University of Idaho student is a senior mechanical engineering major and has his own drag race team.
"My goals are fairly broad, though," he says. "They encompass all of motorsports in general."
Pecht is looking at attending a graduate school in motorsports engineering as plan B if the job he'd like in racing doesn't materialize.
Like Pecht, anyone looking for a career in motorsports needs to consider what they can do to make themselves the candidate most likely to succeed in the job market.
Entering a career in motorsports is like building a race car. It takes planning, skills, hard work, and patience. It doesn't happen overnight.
Suppose you'd like a job with a NASCAR team-what are teams looking for when they hire?
Jerry Freeze, team manager for Petty Enterprises in Mooresville, North Carolina, says one of the most important things is where you live.
"If you want to work in NASCAR bad enough you have to move to North Carolina," he says. "I get a lot of rsums from all over the country. When we have a hole to fill, perhaps unexpectedly, I'm not going to look at some guy in South Dakota. It's going to take maybe a week to get him here for an interview, maybe a month or more for him to move here with his family, and I need someone right now."
Getting hired is often a matter of timing and being in the right place when a position opens. Freeze suggests that October through January is the best time to find a job in NASCAR.
"During the season there is very little turnover," Freeze says. "Most team members are very loyal and stay for the year."
Freeze says his biggest challenge is finding specialized personnel: crew chiefs, track engineers, and pit crew members.
"Most of the rsums I get are from people who are huge fans of racing, but who don't have any skills," he says. "You don't get rsums from people working on a Cup team. They don't have to send them because this is such a close community."
For those highly skilled positions, Freeze looks for experienced people with a "track record."
For someone like Pecht, with a degree, or for that matter, anyone looking to break into racing, Freeze recommends aiming a little lower.
"Start in Busch or Craftsman Trucks or even some of the sports car teams, maybe even on a freebie basis," he suggests.
A lot of jobs are filled because somebody knows somebody. Working in racing helps build those types of contacts.
"Those specialized people can pretty much name their price," he says.
If you lack necessary skill...
If you lack necessary skill and training, the window of opportunity may be small in attempting to land a job in the sport's top levels. Photo by Jerry F. Boone
"Suddenly, we have six or seven new teams," Freeze says. "There's a lot of opportunity right now. We figure about 100 people per car."
Of those 100 people, a lot are craftsmen who create race cars from raw materials and a blank space on the floor: welders, sheetmetal fabricators, suspension and chassis experts, and engine specialists.
For engineering jobs, teams are looking for people with degrees. But for entry-level positions, Freeze says he looks for good general mechanical abilities and prefers experience on a race team.
"We've got people from ARCA, Busch and Craftsman Truck, even open wheel series like IRL or Champ Car," he says. "Maybe the person doesn't work in racing full-time, but maybe works for a dealership during the week and for a team on the weekend. When I'm looking at a rsum, I consider what skills the person has and what they have been doing."
Entry-level people at Petty Enterprises start on teardown.
"Monday morning after a race, after the setup guys do a chassis debrief, the teardown people take every part off the race car." Freeze says. "Of course, they're looking for areas of potential problems, too. When they finish taking the car apart they clean and strip the parts and prepare them to go back on the car. If they seem to be doing well we might let them work on the assembly of a less critical car, like one we're taking to the wind tunnel. It may take three years before we let them put a car together."
What single characteristic is most important in an entry-level employee?
"Athletic ability," Freeze says. "Pit crew is unbelievably difficult to find. Athletic ability in entry-level people is more important than great mechanical ability."
Someone may start as a mechanic, but if they are young, strong, and athletic, they will be given a tryout for pit crew.
"There's more turnover in pit crew than anywhere," Freeze says. "There are lots of people who can change tires in 14 seconds, some who can do it in 13 seconds, and a very few who can do it in 12. Those people are very sought after."
Freeze says he's heard some pit crewmen earn $2,000 per week for a Sunday-only job. "They make unbelievable money."
Part of the problem, Freeze says, is that they are on display every Sunday. Other teams are cruising the pits with stopwatches observing pit stops. Fast crewmen are often "bought" away.
"Hopefully, you have somebody in line to take their place," Freeze says. "Some people at our place, on salary to work in the shop, make more money as pit crew than they do as mechanics."
If you're interested in working over the wall, then attending a program such as Pit Crew U could improve your chances. Pit Instruction and Training (PIT) in Mooresville, North Carolina, was founded by former crew chief Jeff Hammond, and a variety of classes are available. Pit Crew U is an eight-week program with classes held in the evenings for three hours, two nights per week, allowing participants to hold jobs during the day. Classes include everything from equipment selection and maintenance through health conditioning, and from pit stop choreography to preparing a rsum.
"Twenty percent don't finish," says Breon Klopp, senior director of development at PIT. "People think it'll be fun and cool. They don't realize it's a lot of work. They don't even pick up equipment until the third week. Of the remaining 70 to 80 percent, 50 percent will end up in NASCAR."
Increasingly, PIT is training people who are already athletes, ex-college football and baseball players, for instance.
"Mentally it's the same," Klopp says. "They already know about teamwork, about doing a specific job and working in front of a large audience. On a NASCAR pit crew, we need someone who won't fold or cave."
Top graduates of the program may advance to PIT's 5 OFF 5 ON Race Team Performance coaching sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. "We choose the best of the best," Klopp says.