JGR looks to (pit) stop the competition

That’s why it came as quite the surprise when the No. 19 crew of Daniel Suarez performed so poorly in Saturday’s Xfinity race at Iowa Speedway. 

JGR’s intentions were good. After pitting the No. 51 truck on Saturday afternoon, the organization felt it was in its best interest to rest the pit crews for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race. Unfortunately, the decision came at the expense of Suarez, who was provided with a crew assembled at the last minute. 

Prior to Saturday night, Suarez had held lead in the standings for the last eight races. 

Poor stop proves costly

Suarez started from the pole. Due to a slow pit stop, Suarez was mired in traffic and plowed into the back of Josh Berry on a restart. Berry failed to launch because he missed a shift. 

“I just know I hit his car,” Suarez said of the incident that inevitably ended his evening. “They were crashing in front of me and that’s when there’s nothing you can do. I think it’s our fault to be back there with those guys.”

JGR has already addressed the issue of its pit crews at stand-alone races. 

“We’re taking measures to ensure he has better pit stops at the next three stand-alones,” said Matt Osborn, JGR’s director of pit crew operations. “We weren’t satisfied with the performance on pit road Saturday night either. That’s not just from Daniel. That’s from our organization as a whole.

“It’s a difficult schedule with the stand-alones — like Iowa and Pocono — and upcoming in the Chase, Kentucky and Loudon. If you do have your Cup pit crews go to those races, they effectively do work a 24-hour shift with a few hours to sleep on a plane in between. You have to find interesting solutions, basically, to do what you need to do for both series and give Daniel the opportunity to win but also give our Cup drivers the opportunity to win.”

Always improving

JGR currently has 45 to 60 employees in its pit crew program for the four in-house Sprint Cup programs and the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team, roughly 45 who actually go over the wall, 10 to 15 who support those crew members. But Osborn says that number will increase next season (with a second FRR team).

Like all top teams, the organization continually takes steps to advance technique in order not to become complacent in its performance. Osborn acknowledged his over-the-wall operation feels the heat of the competition gunning for JGR. 

“There’s a lot of pressure, right,” Osborn said. “We have a target on our back because we’re performing very well on pit road, on the track — just across the board. We have good cars, good pit crews, good drivers. It’s hard to beat the full package.

“But I think we take that target on our backs as inspiration to just keep pushing harder and try to push the gap. We’re not complacent at all. We’re happy being number one. We want to be number one so far out that number two can’t catch up.”