99 Crew Wins Pit Crew Championship

The No. 99 Citgo SUPERGARD Taurus team won the 2000 Union 76-Rockingham World Pit Crew Championship with a stop of 18.355 seconds. Crew chief Frank Stoddard, driver Jeff Burton and team owner Jack Roush spoke about the victory.

CITGO SUPERGARD PIT CREW
Jackman:        Chuck White
F Tire Changer: Mark Armstrong
R Tire Changer: Todd Foster
Gas:            Chris Dana
Catch Can:      Bobby Christenson
F Tire Carrier: Mike Brill
R Tire Carrier: Fred Martin

JEFF BURTON --99-- Citgo SUPERGARD Taurus -- YOU MUST BE PROUD. "Yeah, I really am. These guys have been working hard all year and not just this year but ever since this team started we've put a lot of effort into pit stops. We won this race last year with a great pit stop and it's pretty fitting that we come here and win the championship because these guys have always put 100 percent effort in it. Just like everything, it always doesn't go exactly like you want it to, but these guys try harder than anybody on the circuit. The last seven or eight races we've been among the best for sure on pit stops and that means a whole lot."

PRESS CONFERENCE-- FRANK STODDARD, Crew Chief -- "It was easy for 'em, they got me off from changing the front tire and that was a second right there. They did a great job. Obviously, we're tickled pink to beat 35 of the best competitors out there today. It takes a great deal of effort and those guys have put it in for the last three or four months we've been putting a hard effort into our pit stops. I was just telling somebody that when you set your goals at the beginning of the year, you look at what you did the year before and where you think the pit stops need to be and we felt going into the year our pit stops were where they needed to be. In years past you've always looked at the 24 and the 18 is who we've looked at this year. They've had great pit stops all year long and they were obviously the champions last year. Early on we realized that we were off on pit stops and we didn't necessarily set our goal high enough, so it's been a little bit of a struggle in the early part of the year, but to come back today and to come back the last half of the season and have good pit stops on pit road, it gives me a great deal of pleasure for what the guys have gone through."

DO YOU SET UP DIFFERENTLY FOR THIS COMPETITION THAN FOR THE RACE? "We don't really put a great deal. We put four springs and four shocks on the car, pretty standard stuff from what we would always run. Here in the pit stop competition, NASCAR makes you have one thread showing, which is a little bit different than what we do on Sundays. On Sundays you can't really see a thread and here you have to be able to catch one, so you have to take a little bit of wheel-spacer off the car and that makes it a little more difficult for the stops to go fast. We really don't put a whole lot of effort in. I mean, we put an effort in, but I don't really know what we do different than we do on a normal week, and if we do do something I'm not sure I want to tell it here today."

HOW SPECIAL IS THIS TO THE TEAM? "I think it's real big. Winning a championship is what everybody wants to do and those guys go over the wall week-in and week-out and probably don't get as much credit as they deserve. It was always a big deal for me. I wanted to win one and I was fortunate these guys brought it home this year, but it is a big deal. I joked this week, we've got Mark Armstrong who changes the front tire and he's a great front tire changer -- and Todd Foster on the back -- and he's from Gastonia, which is the same hometown of Buddy Parrott. Buddy has three championship rings from the pit stop championship and now he's got four. So this week I was telling them in practice that he had some loose, there were a couple loose on the left-front a couple of stops, so I came out the next day and told him not to worry about it that if you were gonna leave 'em loose, it's no big deal because there's already a guy whose got championships from Gastonia, so they'll be fine down there. I was trying to kind of ease it a little bit for 'em, but also give him a little bit extra incentive to go out and do it today. So that was the first thing that he said afterward was that now there are two people from Gastonia, North Carolina to have it."

HOW IS THE PRESSURE DIFFERENT TODAY FROM TOMORROW? "It's really a great deal more. You worry about making sure that you get all of them tight on Sunday, but here you're sitting there thinking about it for an hour. I had knots in my stomach and I wasn't even doing anything on the pit stop other than trying to help the guys stay calm. On Sunday, you've got so many things you're doing in the pits, your tire changers are generally checking air pressures on tires, checking wear on tires. I mean, as soon as the stop is over they're working, working, working non-stop up until the next stop and thinking about things. Today, in this environment, you sit there for two hours and watch 35 other teams do it and I know from doing it myself that you just sit there and say, 'I gotta get 'em tight. I gotta hit six,' and you don't do that on Sunday, you don't have the time to do that on Sunday, so it comes real natural and real free. I think the biggest thing that gets you caught up in these pit stop deals is the tension you have leading up to it because it's a time to have tension."

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO IMPROVE YOUR STOPS THE SECOND HALF? "We've adjusted a few people. We don't have exactly the team that we started out with at the beginning of the year. They might be doing something on the car still, but they're just not in the position they were in. We might have moved the tire carrier to catching the tire or the gas man situation or something, but we have made some changes in personnel from the beginning of the year. Mark Armstrong, we had him changing the rear tires and moved him back to the front. I look at the pit stops and look at a race team a lot similar to a football team or a baseball team. We have so many people on our roster and we have to fill the spots the best way we can and try to do it economically and be able to continue to come to the race track every weekend, and to also do it efficiently. So, you look at people's strengths and their weaknesses and you try to plug those in the holes and you try to get somebody else that picks up for the weakness of somebody else. I think that's what we did. I think going into the year we felt like our stops were pretty decent, we were having consistent stops in between a 15.50 and a 16.50, and all of a sudden 10-12 races into the year we realized we needed to be 14.50 to 15.50 and that was difficult to overcome. You don't just grab a second like that. You have to make some position changes once in a while or change the way you're doing things."

WHERE DOES THAT EXTRA SECOND COME FROM? "I'm not sure exactly, but I think one of the things that people maybe didn't even realize at the time was the rule NASCAR made of bringing your tires back. In effect, I think it's actually ended up making the stops a little bit smoother maybe. You've got it to where the jackman is rolling the tire now, we didn't used to do that type of stuff, so we really just tried at making things more efficient, I think all the teams did. I don't really know where the speed has really come from outside of just doing it more, probably putting more emphasis into it. We practice two to three days a week, minimum, and it's just a repitition deal. When you look at the Olympics and you see women and men dive off the 10-meter platform you wonder how they can do that and it's just repetition and doing it week-in and week-out for four years getting ready for the Olympics and these guys do it week-in and week-out getting ready for every Sunday and I think it's just time."

JACK ROUSH, Team Owner -- "I've been coming down here since 1988 and this is the first time we've had a smell, if you know what I mean. Frankie has been a great spark plug to the team. He's challenged them and, of course, he's after them like a rabbit -- a little terrier -- to get them to do their stops and to correct their problems and to chase them around. Fortunately, he's been able to get in there and show them how to do some of the jobs the way they need to be done if they're lacking, so Frankie is unquestionably the biggest reason that we sit here today. Buddy Parrott has been everybody's mentor. He's the wise old Indian chief that watches and speaks up whenever he thinks that things are a little out of control, but he gives the guys a lot of room and, of course, he gives them a big example to follow."