4 Tires & Fuel: The Pit Crew Report - Number 24 Crew Dominates at Charlotte

Welcome to the first edition of 4 Tires & Fuel: The Pit Crew Report. We'll be digging into the action on pit lane and examining which crews performed the best and what pit stalls benefited their drivers the most.

NASCAR Cup pit crews had a long day at Charlotte Motor Speedway this week as they contested the Coca-Cola 600, with the number 24 pit crew of William Byron coming out on top with an average pit stop time of 10.01 seconds.

Top NASCAR Cup Series pit crews are incredibly consistent as the Top 10 ranking at Charlotte shows a spread of only one second on average from first to tenth.

There were 32 pit stops completed at Charlotte that were below the 10-second mark and unsurprisingly, the number 24 pit crew of William Byron topped that list as well bringing the fastest pit stop of the Coca-Cola 600 at 9.383 seconds. The number 54 pit crew of Ty Gibbs wasn't far behind either with Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports combining to take 9 of the 10 fastest pit stops of the day. Stewart-Haas Racing makes an appearance in sixth with a pit stop time of 9.609 seconds.

The number 24 pit crew of William Byron gets the honors of being the top pit crew of the Coca-Cola 600 and in addition to pitting that 600 mile Cup Series race, they kept working into the night and pitted the number 8 car of Josh Berry in the Xfinity Series race on the same day. The members of the number 24 Hendrick Motorsports pit crew at the Coca-Cola 600 were as follows:

In addition to having a fast pit crew, you also need a driver that can enter and exit pit lane quickly and most Cup Series drivers are very good about entering and exiting pit lane so pit stall selection plays a huge part when pit stops and driver time on pit lane are so close. The first pit stall at Charlotte Motor Speedway is quite a bit ahead of the rest as William Byron had an advantage of 0.45 over the second fastest time on pit lane of Brad Keselowski who was in the pit stall immediately behind him. Having an opening going into a pit stall or exiting a pit stall also played a huge advantage as only one driver in the top 10 had no openings on either side of his pit stall. The Top 10 driver times on pit lane ended up as follows:

The action on pit lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway was exciting and shows just how close the talent is when it comes to the top pit crews and top drivers in the Cup Series as averages on pit lane are often only counted in the tenths of seconds and often come down to hundredths.

Methodology: Pit stops are pulled from NASCAR data and filtered to only show pit stops that included four tire changes that lasted between 8 seconds and 25 seconds in order to exclude pit stops that involve extenuating circumstances.

-Photo credit: Hendrick Motorsports