Meyer Shank considering fly-in crews for IndyCar pit stops

01/04/2025 10:31 AM

Meyer Shank Racing co-owner Michael Shank is wondering whether it's time for his NTT IndyCar Series team to take a page from NASCAR programs and begin flying in specialist pit crews to go over the wall and handle the servicing of their cars in competition.

It's a practice that's customary in stock car racing, where former college and professional athletes are recruited to perform the fastest possible tire changes and refueling. It also owns a piece of Indianapolis 500 history, minus the athletic side, in 1965 when Lotus brought in the Wood Brothers' NASCAR pit crew to bring its unique skills to servicing Jimmy Clark's car on the way to reaching victory lane.

Today, and with the ever-shrinking separation between IndyCar teams, Shank thinks the practice of asking each car's mechanics to pull double duty as its pit crew might be ready for a change.

"A thing that I think is coming is professional pit crews," Shank told RACER. "It’s trying to creep in. Now I’m trying to figure out ways to pay for it. As an example, instead of paying a driver all the money you have left, maybe some of that budget could go towards a pro-spec pit crew that come in.

"I think that’s definitely on its way in, and we’re talking about D1, D2, D3 athletes that are super competitive and make a decent living doing other things but also come in on the weekends. But we’re not there yet though. We’re looking at it. There’s already teams doing a couple of positions that way, but not all of them. But I think it's going more in that direction over the next year or two."

During most IndyCar pit stops, which last approximately eight seconds, it takes longer for the refueler to fill the car's 17.5-gallon fuel tank than it does for the four tire changers to complete their jobs. On the surface, that dynamic alone would seemingly invalidate any needs for fly-in pit crews. But the tactic of doing “short fills,” the timed refuelings where the tank isn't filled to capacity and the car is sent once the tire changes are finished — done to eke out an advantage over teams who've elected to fill their tanks — to gain positions is becoming more popular in IndyCar.

In that strategical play, the speed of the tire changers and the fast and consistent connecting of the fuel probe to the car has a big impact on how long the car sits in a stationary position. If a dedicated pit crew can produce stops that are a few tenths of a second faster than traditional crews, Shank sees it as a worthy expense.

"Short fills are one thing, and also, when the cars on the ground, it fuels quicker," he said. "Now, we’re talking slight improvements, like half-a-tenth here, but gravity is our king, right? The quicker the tires are done and the car is on the ground, the quicker the fuel goes, so you want every opportunity to make up a tenth or two and beat you out by a nose. If you can do that, then the whole effort put in to hiring these type of guys worked, as far as I’m concerned."

Reducing the physical demands on MSR's full-time crews who look after the Nos. 60 and 66 Hondas, who would handle all aspects of preparing and running the cars, minus going over the wall to service the machines on race day, is another meaningful area under consideration.

"It’s just a lot to put on these guys as the schedule gets tighter and busier," Shank added. "We ask them for perfection on the cars with car preparation, and then ask for perfection on pit lane performance, right? That’s just a lot to ask of anybody."

But as Shank found while floating the idea of fly-in pit crews to his team, there's one factor to contemplate that has nothing to do with speed and consistency.

"There’s two sides to that coin that I’m learning as we try to figure out if this is the right thing to do," he said. "One side is a lot of the guys — I would say, 70 percent of the people that pit the car — do it because they love it, even though it’s more work for them. They would truly miss that side of it, so you've got to weigh that against pure performance. Can we truly make a consistent gain compared to guys that are doing the equivalent to playing both sides of the ball?

"That’s what this is, right? We’re asking them to do all that at a super high-level of execution all weekend with preparing and running the cars in all the sessions, and then at the end, when everybody is the most worn out, to go out there and do the same high level with pit stops. And no joke, there's all kinds of amazing crews who do it and have done it for a lot longer than I've been here, including our own. But what if we could help ourselves by doing it a different way? It’s going to be a delicate rope to walk, in my mind, that's for sure."