crew/team...

[dfhotlm33c]

This is just a curiosity question...kind of a poll if you will..

how many people are on your crew/team? For instance, how many come to your shop/garage during the week and help maintain/adjust? Also, how many people come to the track with you and help wrench?

Finally, on average, how many days/hours are you spending in the shop each week prepping?

I will start..it's pretty easy:

It's me and my Dad in the shop

Me and my Dad and occasionally my uncle, and once in a while my son at the track, but most wrenching is done by me and Dad..

Spend about a half day (3-4 hours) cleaning and grinding tires, then a full day (8 hours) maintaining/adjusting, then another half day (3-4) checking all equipment and loading. This is on a normal week where nothing has broken or been smashed...and this is to run one night..this weekend we are going to do our first two night run..Wayne County speedway Friday, and Eriez Sunday!

[mignum]

I do the wrenching through the week by myself my buddy drives a truck so until friday evening if anythiing is done its me doing it or i dont race on friday night. At the track my buddy usually is able to make it or his son if not i have been by myself before, but when i have a helper he really doesnt pay attention to anything that needs to be done like tire temps,ETC... he is usually so busy watching other classes he cant focus on our ride. But glad to have a hand when i can get one.

[perfconn]

Mignum,
Saw where you ran pretty good at Crossville last week.

[Chico]

when I race Me and oldest daughter wrench my son in law and youngest daughter do the rest when we race
spend 10 12 hrs a week working on the car if we're racing that week and 4 or 5 sat when we clean it go over the tires

[mignum]

Mignum,
Saw where you ran pretty good at Crossville last week.

We were tickled to death to run where we did first time up there, i have so much to learn about my setup right now, we are lucky that there are drivers out there that dont care to help get you going in the right direction.

[latemodel86]

Whenever I use to race a good bit 2 and 3 yr ago, it was me and my dad. We'd have people there help us out on what to do to the car, but it was pretty much just me and him. Sometimes we'd take the late model over to someones house to get it scaled and they helped. Then after Aug. 2010 we moved and had nothing to work out of except a 20x20 shed and a utility room beside the carport. Pretty much after that I started working on it all by myself. Quite an experience to go from having your dad do most everything on it for you in the basement, to working on it with almost no help in the driveway when it's either 95 or 45 outside. With me being the age I am, it's hard to do this by myself and especially with what little I know. That's pretty much why I hardly ever get to race now and with my dad having lost all interest in it. This whole thing has taught me how lucky I was at the time, even though I knew I was lucky and was thankful for what I had going for me, but I took it for granted. It has also make me realize how lucky you see kids my age who are Richy Rich and have a team helping them out with their racing career and are fortunate enough to race 30+ times a year. Point is, no matter how much you know or how much money you have, racecars are a multi-person job and almost a full time job.

[dualdj1]

Owner/Driver does all the maint during the week, with his daughter helping. Anything major mechanical crew chief will do/help with. On the weekends we typically have 3 crew guys at the track, 1 on tires/fuel, 1 on suspension, and crew chief. Crew chief is in town, other 2 out of town. If I get to town early on race day, help prep and load to go to the track, otherwise do checks at the track. usually get there right when gates open, so plenty of time to prepare and check things on race day.

[TWISTER]

For our team it is pretty much me doing it ALL!!! My driver lives out of town and can occasionally make it one night a week, but that is on occasion. I have one guy who comes to the shop alomost every night when i am there and helps and does what he can but he is new to it and does all the little stuff for me. I spend an average of 40 hours a week in the shop and that is after working a 50 hour a week job. I get off work at 5 and am in the shop most nights by 5:30 until about 11 M-F and then 4 or 5 hours on Saturday before races and then all day on Sunday. I have 2 other guys who live out of town as well, that meet me at the track on Saturdays to help. My Dad comes down and help out too but he isnt into it like he used to be and says that this is his last year of it. We spend all day on Sunday washing the car, tires, and cleaning out the trailer and mopping it out and just generally restocking supplies for the next week. Once that is complete then we start the process of documenting all notes and bar locations and the general events and changes made on the night before. We also weigh the car out as it came of the track and document that info as well. The rest of the week all the other stuff required to have a successful race team is done, scaling,scaling and more scaling of the car, tire mounting and sizing,car maintenance,etc.
I spend more hours in the shop in most weeks than a lot of people do on their regular jobs, but that is probably why our team has been so successful. We have 7 track Championships since 2007 and approximatley 60 feature wins. There is nothing like the comfort of being well prepared and the results show as well.

[joedoozer]

What's a "crew"? I do all the work, fabricating, driving, maintenance, cleaning, prep work at the shop. My wife goes to the track to help load and unload, and help me getting in and out of the car, and some occasional mud scraping. But that's it. No crew in the shop and no crew at the track. Just me.

[dualdj1]

What's a "crew"? I do all the work, fabricating, driving, maintenance, cleaning, prep work at the shop. My wife goes to the track to help load and unload, and help me getting in and out of the car, and some occasional mud scraping. But that's it. No crew in the shop and no crew at the track. Just me.

Crew's them younguns you're workin on :P

[dfhotlm33c]

Good stuff... keep it coming!! Nice to know I'm not the only one out there with a small team!

Twister..are you married? I think my wife would have my head if I spent that much time with the race car! I have worked her up to the level I'm at now and it seems to work well! Thankfully, we are both math teachers, so summers are nice! and, I so need a good set of digital scales...we use these old school analog, cup style scales that are like 8" tall...takes forever to get the car up on them correctly...and they use ATF as the fluid..so temperature changes cause issues with accuracy...always having to calibrate them...so needless to say, weight relocation doesn't happen often..and we spent a few days playing with everything so we knew what changes did what to wedge, bite and balance..

[joedoozer]

Crew's them younguns you're workin on :P

Haha I wish. Triplets puts a stop to it all.

[dualdj1]

Haha I wish. Triplets puts a stop to it all.

Hiatus, not stop. Just have to get em big enough to carry tires around

[dualdj1]

Yeah DF definitely look at getting a good set of scales. Even if you're not changing things much, you still could have something move, bend, etc etc, and not know it until you scale and it's off. It's one of those good checks to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be. We scaled night before engine went out, only ran hot laps, qual, and heat. After putting it back together, has 30lbs extra LR, for no apparent reason. Good thing to check at least every few weeks.

[AmickRacing]

I don't know the amount of labor spent working on the car, and likely that's a good thing.

It's just Dad and I working on my car. He typically takes care of the weekly checks (fluids, tight, etc), I do setup, motor, tires and try to make the right calls at the track. Generally speaking I wash the car on saturday morning (we race fridays), do a few hours of work after that, make sure there's no parts that need to be ordered. Sunday if we're not busy a few more hours, then during the week I'd say 2-3 evenings are spent on the car.

I'm mighty thankful for his help, even though we tend to butt heads a lot, I couldn't do it all myself. I get tossed out of town for work quite a bit, so I'm gone at least 1-2 weeks a month.

I do miss the good ole days. When I was younger, we'd spend most evenings out working on the car along with a couple other guys. Fridays we usually had at least 5 guys in the pits helping, if not more. Never seemed like nearly as much work with all that help.

I'm not sure if it's like this at many other tracks, but it seems like as you move up in the class's, there are fewer and fewer pit crew. The street stocks seem to have 3-5 guys helping, b-mods and supers is at least a couple up to 5. Once you get into the LM and sprints though, it seems like there's only 1-2 guys at most other than the driver. Around here there's a couple guys who do 100% of it solo also.

[billetbirdcage]

You really have 2 choices: either you have money and can afford to hire help or if on a budget, you have to rely on yourself or voluntary part time crew.

Now the part the most don't want to here: how much this applies to what level your trying to race at (local, regional, or national)

Couple things to consider

1. if your up running up front each week, you're putting less laps on your equipment (not having to run B's) and you likely not tearing up stuff from running back in the pack where things happen (your fault or not).

2. Running up front obviously brings in more money (could say less of a loss), this allows more money to be put back into the car and engine. This means you likely have fresher parts on the car and less chance of failure. If you have old parts on the car, you need to spend more time going over things and check what is useable for a couple more races and what needs replaced now as it isn't going to run much longer.

3. Moral is better and everyone gets along better and tempers aren't short like they will be when your not running good.

Short story: You actually need to spend more time in the shop then the guy running up front every week just to get the car ready. Granted the guy's up front are still likely to spend more time in the shop then you anyways, but even if he doesn't he's working on other things besides just maintenance making his car better.

It's tough if your on a budget, if your married or have kids your really behind the 8 ball so to speak. It really takes at least 40 years a week to run and maintain a top team at a lower regional level, which isn't possible for a lot of people. Money for sure helps, no way around that but I see so many people get out worked in the shop and want to put the blame on money.

It really boils down to "HOW BAD DO YOU WANT TO WIN?".

Are you watching TV instead of being in the shop?
Are you drinking beer or socializing while working on the car or even working on the car?
Are you thinking about what the car needs or set-up stuff while your taking a shower?
Are you out chasing ladies?
Do you work on the car on Sunday after the races?
Do you have spare parts assembled and ready to go in case of a wreck (points racing)?
Do you have a spare body/nose assembly made in the off season or when you have time?
Do you need to hire someone to come in to look over your program and see where the problem is instead of going to that race that to far away but you just want to go?
etc, etc, etc.

There's very few people that will do this and those are generally the ones that are successful. I do understand that not everyone can commit this much time, but remember someone that your racing against might be.

Again you should ask yourself how committed am I and how bad do I want to win and am I doing everything I can to make this happen (doesn't have to be about money).

Just my 1 1/2 cents

[perfconn]

Back 10 or 12 years ago when I first started helping Bizkit,I told him that there was a lot of people in racing that could out spend him but there was no reason to let them out work him.

[talclipse]

Hey Terry; I tried sending you a private message; but, I need to get in touch with you and pick your brain. What's the best way to get a hold of you?

[perfconn]

Shoot me an email at: terry.marciaburnett@gmail.com

[TWISTER]

[QUOTE=dfhotlm33c;1560375]Good stuff... keep it coming!! Nice to know I'm not the only one out there with a small team!

Twister..are you married? I think my wife would have my head if I spent that much time with the race car!


No but i might as well be.....been with her for 13 years, so i guess really, yeah i am. LOL!!! Ok here goes the kicker.......i honestly think she loves racing more than i do!!! If we get rained out at our local track she wants to know what other track are we going to that night to watch or race. Not to mention the fact that she and her sister, thats right, her SISTER, used to own and operate a go kart track!!! Where most women want to shop, she wants to race!!!! She had a choice to go get a cabin in the mts for vacation or go to the world finals in charlotte......do i need to say what she chose? We will be in section 408 just outside of turn 4 in November!!! Good luck to ya!!