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By David Malsher-Lopez - May 23, 2026, 12:23 PM ET

Perfecting an IndyCar pit stop the RLL way Winning the race in the pits

The Indianapolis 500 isn’t just IndyCar’s biggest race: it’s also the longest in terms of distance, with 200 laps of the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Providing it runs the full distance, the leaders will have made at least five pit stops.

So far in 2026, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan No. 15 team, the folks servicing Graham Rahal, have been better on pit lane than any other crew. We talked to two vital members of the team to find out how they get it done.

Once a pit lane speed limit was introduced to Formula 1 from the 1994 Monaco Grand Prix, Michael Schumacher was one of the first drivers that we at RACER can recall who really practiced maximizing his speed on pit entry, before crossing the pitlane speed limit line. With everyone conforming to the same speed when in pit lane proper, it was an obvious way to minimize time off the racing surface come race day.

These days, it’s almost de rigeur across multiple racing series to follow Schuey’s example and be up to speed on how to shed speed at the last possible moment without incurring a drive-through penalty. As Kyle Sagan, Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s pit stop manager explains, “We practice that every day we’re on track – test session, practice session, qualifying session, warm-up… We study data on that, and then also analyze videos of their entry into the pit box. Graham [Rahal] is our veteran on the team and is the best of our guys on pit lane: videos of him help our sophomore, Louis Foster, and our rookie Mick Schumacher, [yes, ironically, son of Mr. Pit Lane Perfection himself]. Great pit stops start with the driver.

“I was on Alex Palou’s car in 2023, and our No. 10 [Chip Ganassi Racing] crew would beat our teammates on Scott Dixon’s car, from stop to drop [from car coming to a halt to coming down off the jacks] but Scott would kill us on pit lane overall. So I hammer home to any driver, ‘You don’t have to come in with all wheels locked up to shave off half a tenth, but you must always hit your marks and be consistent, whether you have to drive in to your box around the car that’s pitted behind you, or whether you’re able to come straight in. That allows the crew to get used to how you arrive.”

Sagan, who moved from Arrow McLaren to Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing for 2026, is a difference-maker. Under his instruction, Rahal’s pit stops have been some of the finest in the NTT IndyCar Series this year. Not that Sagan will accept all the credit.
Paul Laguette illustration

“Graham has been with his crew for nine or ten years and it shows,” he says. “It used to be that you could do pit stop practice whenever you had time through the weekend. Now we have specific times, whether it’s the last 20 minutes of final practice or in race day warm-up, and we use that.

“Per IndyCar rules, the outside-front guy – often the crew chief – is standing up and signaling to our driver where we are, with the new outside front by his right foot. The outside rear tire is out there, too, but its changer isn’t there yet because the driver can’t run over the hose. The inside front and inside rear guys are poised – front guy crouched, rear guy standing – and waiting with their air guns, but their new tires are being held by crew members on this side the wall, ready to hand over the fresh tires and retrieve the old ones.
“As the driver stops – on his marks, hopefully! – the outside front tire and both inside guys can tackle their wheels simultaneously, as the jackman goes to the rear hydraulic jacking point to activate the car’s inbuilt jacks and the outside-rear guy runs around the back and removes his wheel, the refueler fits the hose and the tear-off person runs to clear the tear-off from the aero screen. That’s the only job that he or she is allowed to perform.

“The outside front guy, once his job is completed, throws the airgun back toward pit wall, lays the old wheel down and stands up. The outside-rear guy hands his wheel to the jackman who takes it while pausing at the jack to release it and lower the car, before taking the old outside rear back to the other side of the wall. The two inside wheel-changers have already handed off their old wheels back over the wall and if everything’s gone smoothly, they’re all signaling to the outside front guy that their job is done.

“If the car needs a full fuel load, that will decide the time of the stop, because I want the outside front and the two inside guys to be sub-4.75 seconds, and the outside rear to be sub-5.25s. From the car stopping to the fueler being fully plugged in should be six-tenths of a second, and then from completely empty to absolutely full tanks is 7.5s. The crew chief, on the outside front, is then the person who the driver looks at to signal when he’s free to leave the pitbox according to traffic.”

Front tire changers have to be adept at adjusting wing settings in qualifying and race, according to how a driver feels he needs to alter his car’s responses – often according to tire sets.
“On a road course, we have adjusters for the flaps on both sides ” says Sagan, “so each tire changer is responsible for his or her side. On the speedways, we have one adjuster on the nosecone. Then it’s the inside-front guy’s job unless he has an issue, and it’s the outside-front guy’s job to notice if his counterpart has an issue because then it might become his job.”

Flexibility is key for the crew, since they could find themselves in as many pit lanes going from left to right as from right to left.

Sagan states: “The way I’ve been explaining it – outside/inside rather than right/left – is the way it is in the team. The outside-rear tire changer is always the one running around the rear of the car, with his back to pit lane when tire-changing, whichever way pit lane goes, just as the outside-front changer is always the outside-front changer, waving the guy in and signaling him to leave.

“Ideally, he or she would be ambidextrous to carry out duties with left or right hands!”

 

Geoff Miller/Lumen via Getty Images


By David Malsher-Lopez - May 23, 2026, 12:23 PM ET

Perfecting an IndyCar pit stop the RLL way

THAT OUTSIDE-FRONT GUY’S VIEW

T.J. Thompson serves as Graham Rahal’s chief mechanic and, as per what seems like IndyCar etiquette, is also the No. 15 car’s outside front wheel-changer.

“I bring the outside front over the wall but I remain standing to wave Graham in,” he says. “When he’s about three pit boxes away, and they’re counting him down over the radio, that’s when I crouch down and get ready. We have a spring system on the wheelgun, and I pull a handle to put it into reverse to detach the wheelnut. When I release that handle, it automatically shuttles to going the other way, ready to tighten the new wheel on. So when I drop the gun and switch the tire, when I pick the gun back up, it’s already set to go the other way to attach the new wheel on. It’s been that way for the nine years I’ve been doing this.

“The wheel nut that comes off the car will stay in the gun magnetically, although if you’re not careful or a little rock gets in there, you can send it flying down pit lane because the gun is spinning at 18,000 rpm or something. So you keep a spare on a magnetic belt around your waist, and you have to make sure it’s the correct right- or left-hand thread nuts. So at say, Barber Motorsports Park or Indy, I’m on the right-front tire; at Long Beach or Indy road course, I’m left-front.”
TJ Thompson with Graham Rahal. RLL photo

Unlike Sagan’s “ideal”, Thompson is not ambidextrous.

“No I’m not – there are guys who are – but I’m right-handed,” he grins. “I’m right-handed and I always like to have the hose on my right. So when we’re going left-to-right on pitlane, I always like to have the hose come under my legs, so I have to get up and then throw the hose back toward the pit wall. When I’m on the right-front, the hose goes in the opposite direction so it’s not interfering with Graham’s exit from the pit box at all. And I’m only throwing it halfway to the pit wall – there’s someone the other side reeling it in.”

This isn’t the only position Thompson has held on the pit crew: before he moved to that oh-so-vulnerable position with his back to pit lane, he had that oh-so-vulnerable (for different reasons) position on the inside front…

“The standard development is that you’ll start on the inside-front, and then move to a different position. I think it’s because when you’re crouching close to pit wall, you have a tire helper on the other side of the wall to take the old one that you’ve just removed out of the way. It’s like the starter position for a pit crew member, because of that. The outside front person is out there by themself, they’ve got to throw the gun, and so on. The outside rear person obviously has to run around the rear of the car to get in position, and the inside rear person is getting crowded by the refueler and obviously has to deal with a bigger tire. So that’s why the inside-front is the ‘starter’ position in a pit crew.”

The outside-front pit member is the only crew member who has a tire left on pitlane when the car exits the pit box, and where he or she places it will define the driver’s trajectory, especially if everyone has pitted under a caution. That’s something that Thompson relishes because he’s a racer, who originally tried to work his way through the U.S. open-wheel junior ranks as a driver.
“I love it!” he declares. “You’re competing with the other pit crews, within your team and, more importantly, the other teams. That helps keep the edge, thinking, ‘I’m a part of the competition.’ That’s what I crave.”

And that time element? Of course, it’s hugely demanding, especially when the car is running well, as at Barber, where Graham Rahal finished third,

“Our outside-rear person should be getting his job done between 4.5 or 5 seconds. My goal is always four seconds. I can go faster than that – my personal best is 3.62. But my go-to is four, because then if something does go wrong, you’re not going to be at a five or a six.

“If it’s a ‘regular’ stop for a full fuel load, then the pressure is slightly reduced for the wheel-changers because the fuel is going to take 6.5-7 seconds. But you really feel the pressure if the field’s under caution because you know most cars are going to come down pitlane and that’s when you’re really competing against the other crews.”
Effective execution by the pit crew includes getting in and out of an often frenetic pit lane with minimal delays. Michael Levitt/Lumen via Getty Images

And then there is the major judgment call from Thompson and his equivalents on the outside fronts of each car as to when to send his driver out into the throng. There are inevitably some very close calls.
Thompson explains: “I get a lot of help from our people on the timing stand – in our case, Brian Barnhart, Graham’s strategist – because he’ll have a better view than me, plus I’ve just been changing the tire. Graham will have been looking in the mirror to check the fuel hose is fully disengaged, and then he looks to me for the signal. I won’t send him if there’s a car within a pit box distance already heading out and still in the slow lane.”

So what does T.J. think is the defining quality of a slick and quick crew that can earn the Firestone Pit Performance Award – in which the No. 15 team currently leads the standings?

“It’s all about cumulative time on pit lane, so having someone as experienced and sharp as Graham is a big help because it’s total time from pit-in to pit-out, so having him minimizing that time and being very accurate at stopping on his marks is great.

“And then having a good fueler who can get in the buckeye fast and pull out fast – reducing his time from 7 to 6.5 seconds, that’s also huge. The margins from the best stops to the 10th-best are usually just half a second, so a good fueler makes a massive difference.

“The other point that I think has made a difference for us is that we’ve kept the crew on the No. 15 the same as last year. Building that rapport so everyone is in-sync with each other has helped make us slick.”

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