In a NASCAR race, the average pit stop for a four-tire change is about 15 to 16 seconds. Two tires and a quick gas refill can be done in less than 10.
So if you’re one of the five people in the pit crew, your body has to run as efficiently as the car itself.
“Back in the day, when the sport first started, you wanted a guy [in pit crew] who knew about cars,” Derrell Edwards, 26, a former college basketball player who works on the team for Austin Dillon’s No. 3 car, tells The Post. “It evolved, and it’s not that way anymore.”
NASCAR teams have taken to recruiting their pit crews from college sports, hiring brawny football and basketball players such as Edwards who can apply their athletic prowess to whipping cars into shape. After all, each tire weighs about 70 pounds, and the car itself — which needs to be jacked up for tire changes — weighs 3,000 pounds.
The strength required makes the support crew more athletic than the drivers, who are the bankable superstars of the sport. “For the most part, we’re the fitter guys,” says Edwards, whose talents will be on display Sunday when NASCAR hits Pocono Raceway. “We pride ourselves in it.”
But before joining NASCAR in 2014, the sport wasn’t on Edwards’ radar. The Baltimore native — who’s 6-foot-1 and weighs 225 pounds — played hoops at High Point University in North Carolina, where he captured two consecutive Big South Conference regular season championships as a shooting guard.
During his final year at college, a member of his school’s alumni association connected him to Richard Childress Racing, which offered him an internship. Edwards, who says he thrives on challenges, was then offered a full-time job with the racing team upon graduation in 2014.
Derrell Edwards.HHP/Harold Hinson“I asked my [soon-to-be] father-in-law, ‘Hey, should I go play [basketball] overseas or [take] this opportunity to work in racing?’ and he said, ‘Why don’t you go be the Jackie Robinson of NASCAR?’ ”
In just a few short years, Edwards has become a trailblazer.
In February, he made NASCAR history when he became the first African-American to be part of a Daytona 500 winning team as a member of driver Dillon’s crew.
But his first step toward becoming a champion was focusing on his fitness.
Unlike most sports, says Edwards, there’s no handbook or conventional wisdom on conditioning. Rather, the pit-crew regimens are what he calls “a free-for-all.”
During the week, Edwards hits the gym with teammates to do core work, bench presses, pushups and curls. He’ll mix in CrossFit workouts, and when it’s warm, he’ll run outside, incorporating interval sprints. The grueling season lasts from February to November.
Pit-crew teams have a physical therapist to tend to their injuries, which most frequently occur in the back and knees because of all the weight they’re carrying.
Edwards figures that through scientific analysis, he could perhaps change the way pit crews look at fitness to maximize performance and longevity in the sport.
“I’m trying to work with the biomechanics lab at High Point, where I went to school and show them how we move and our stances, which are unorthodox … I’m definitely on a quest to figure out whether I should be doing band-resistance workouts or lifting old-school,” he says. “I want to figure out what is the best workout for a tire guy.”
He also wants to continue to make an impact on the sport both on and off the track.
“I’m a winner. Every place I’ve played, I’ve won a championship there,” he said. “That’s the stuff that motivates me.”
