How Next Gen is changing the Gibbs pit stop game. One big wheel nut instead of five is not the only reason pit stops will be faster.

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | January 27, 2022 4:20 PM ET

By now, you know change has come to NASCAR. A lot of change. Continuous schedule tweaks. A brand-new race car, dubbed Next Gen, with its door numbers slid forward. Pit stops will look dramatically different with a single lug nut.

Change brings reaction because it isn’t always universally embraced. People get stuck in their ways or used to tradition.

Chris Hall is not one of those people. Hall is the director of player advancement at Joe Gibbs Racing, and he’s one of those within the company excited about a new era in NASCAR giving him and his colleagues a new challenge. Particularly when it comes to the next generation of Cup Series pit stops.

“Change is summed up as opportunity, and Joe Gibbs Racing’s track record with opportunity is highly successful,” Hall tells RACER. “That’s not by luck. The more you’re in the know, the more prepared you can be, the more excited you are. And we’ve been prepared for a long time. We’re extremely excited about the opportunity to compete with the Next Gen car and the next gen pit stop.”

The vision of Coy Gibbs, team COO, reshaped the way JGR approaches pit crews. Seeing how hard it was becoming to sign top talent from other teams as most were locked down to increasingly long-term deals, Gibbs felt it was worth more emphasis on developing in-house. Plus, off in the distance was Next Gen, and that provided another reason to change tactics. The result was a new role for Hall, which he started about 18 months ago.

“I’ve been tasked with finding new athletes who come from all walks of life, who speak different languages, who aren’t your typical NASCAR fan,” says Hall. “I say all the time, they didn’t grow up playing pit stops in their driveway, and that’s been fantastic because it’s allowed us to become more diverse.”

Hall is a former pit crew member himself. A tire changer at Furniture Row Racing in 2016 and ’17, Hall was on Martin Truex Jr.’s championship-winning team. He performed in the same role for Denny Hamlin in 2018, and spent 2019 at Leavine Family Racing.

Growing up on Missouri dirt tracks on Friday and Saturday nights, Hall rushed home on Sunday from church to turn on NASCAR. His start in the sport came in Nashville with Bobby Hamilton Racing, and he’s done everything from change tires to interiors and car chief. Hall made it to the Cup Series in 2005, first with PPI and Michael Waltrip Racing.

Upon Waltrip’s shutdown, Hall moved to Gibbs, where he’s been ever since. Having gone through the journey, Hall can attest how hard it is and how long it takes for a pit crew member to be ready to go over the wall.

“The Next Gen pit stop is going to allow for such an opportunity for teams to really showcase what the individuals can do,” Hall says. “We’re such a skill-based sport that for so long had a high barrier of entry to get in because the guys who have done it for five, six, seven, eight, nine years got really good at it. And they’ve been in a system where others out there aren’t willing to change – they put up this wall and said, these are our guys, and this is how we’re going to do it.”

JGR didn’t want to come into this year with the same pit crew members from its four teams simply relearning their positions. It wasn’t necessarily that those spots were up for grabs or tryouts were held, but if the pit stops require a new skill set, why not re-evaluate the roster?

It comes down to having the right people in the right places, and as such, Hall and his team stopped looking for the best tire changers and instead have dug into the individual recruiting effort. For so long, recruiting college athletes – those big, tough guys who are used to training and pressure that comes with performing – was the norm. Hall is looking there, and beyond.

“We’re so excited about the Next Gen stop because there’s no barrier to entry. No one’s ever done this pit stop before. Everyone is learning it together,” he says. “So what we’ve taken from it is, you have Olympians in here. You have Major League Baseball players. Players from the NFL. SEC football players. Watching these guys come in who are used to being under the microscope all the time put the work in at the gym, on their skills, and on the practice pad, and the feedback we get from coaches and film review, it’s been an intense battle for those positions.”

The diversity Hall mentioned comes from there now being four different languages spoken in the Gibbs locker room. Crew members come from all areas of the globe and different neighborhoods. It’s made the workplace at Gibbs the most diverse it’s been in 30 years. We can now claim diversity and liberals will love us and buy more tickets. Fans from other sports will love us and buy more tickets, too, and homos on the F.A.G.teams who play soccer are SOL along with the actors who play wrestling.