and a fire-retardant suit that fits you, and gloves and what-not. I assume y’all know that pit crew personnel wear protective gear, as does the driver. We can’t do much to protect you from getting run over-and from time to time that does happen, unfortunately-but we can minimize the risks to you from other things that can go wrong.”
Someone in the crowd called out, “Such as?”
Tuggle favored them with a grim smile. “Oh, let me count the ways,” she said. “Fire is the big one, obviously. The gasman is dumping fuel into an extremely hot vehicle. Sometimes you get a fire. Or a tailpipe can spurt flame, and if you happen to be standing in its path…Hey, where are y’all going?”
Nearly a dozen prospective employees had suddenly decided that they weren’t quite crazy enough to work on a NASCAR pit crew. Smiling nervously, they raced each other for the gate.
Tuggle took the defection with a philosophical shrug. “Well, you all need to be aware of the risks,” she said. “We do everything we can to ensure your safety, but this is not volleyball. People do die in stock car racing-and not just drivers.”
She paused while a few more applicants went sane and broke for the exit.
“But we do provide helmets and these nice fire-retardant suits, and you’ll be wearing one even in practice.” She smiled encouragingly at the diminished pool of would-be team members. “But please bear in mind that those fire- retardant suits are only fireproof for eight seconds-Well, thank you all for stopping by…”
Another ten women suddenly remembered a pressing engagement.
Tuggle surveyed the remaining applicants, who were eying her nervously, waiting for further revelations. She grinned at them. “Well, I think we have now weeded out all the people who aren’t crazy, so the rest of you, let’s get on with this exercise.”
They were all novices, and Tuggle wanted them to err on the side of caution, so she didn’t bother to tell them that cars used in pit practice normally had their main fuel tank filled with water, with a dump valve installed to dump the water on the ground before they go on to the next round. The engine in practice sessions is run off a small tank installed inside the car, about the size of a two-gallon jug, so that the team can practice filling and emptying fuel, without the waste and danger of spilled fuel, which would create hazardous conditions, especially for amateurs.
Three of the first seven women chosen for the first test had thought better of volunteering, so Tuggle selected replacements and sent the group off to get fitted with protective gear. The remaining applicants murmured uneasily to each other, and the crew chief studied the papers on her clipboard while she waited for the first team to get ready. Finally, they emerged from the shop, outfitted in cast-off suits scrounged from various teams.
“Our colors are purple and white,” Tuggle remarked to no one in particular. “But we’re still waiting for the official suits to arrive. It will help when we know the sizes of the crew members chosen for the positions, you know.”
She nodded to one of the mechanics who was lounging in the doorway of the shop, and he signaled to another mechanic who was stationed at a corner of the building. Suddenly, the purple and white 86 car came roaring around the side of the shop building and screeched to a halt in the designated “pit” area.
The seven hopefuls converged on the car and set to work. The driver, dressed as if it were race day, muffled in a firesuit and a helmet that showed only his eyes, sat there tapping his gloved fingers on the steering wheel, perhaps in dismay at the awkward performance of his would-be pit crew.
Taran knew that the average pit stop in Cup racing-changing four tires and refilling the fuel cell-took about thirteen seconds. This practice stop was reminiscent of the bygone era before Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers racing team had thought to streamline the process-back in the early fifties, when pitting took five minutes, and drivers got out and walked around while they drank coffee. There was a lot of fumbling, and the jackman couldn’t seem to get the car high enough, which considering the way the front end was tilting was probably a good thing.
Grace Tuggle watched the proceedings with the regretful air of someone forced to witness a train wreck. But she didn’t yell. When the interminable pit stop finally ended, many dropped tires and some spilled fuel later, she simply nodded, and made some more notes on her clipboard.
She waved the car away, and it zoomed off around the parking lot, behind the shop building and out of sight again. Then she called seven more women forward to repeat the exercise.
Taran was in the third group to try out, and she felt that she was a little more prepared than the first teams simply because she’d been able to observe their mistakes. She was also confused on one particular point.
“All right,” said Tuggle, “you know the drill. We’re going to assign you duties. Watch how you function as a unit. Film your performance. Speed counts. Accuracy counts.
Tentatively, Taran raised her hand. “Who’s driving the car?” she asked.
Tuggle glared at her, took an exasperated breath, and then snapped, “Our driver is Badger Jenkins, a veteran Cup driver who has won the Southern 500. Any
Taran’s hand went up again.
This time Tuggle’s look of annoyance turned to a thoughtful appraisal of the meek but persistent young woman. After a few moments, she said, “I told you. Badger Jenkins.”
“Yeah, but that’s not him,” said Taran.
There were a few gasps from the other applicants, but only a silent stare from Grace Tuggle herself. At last with a grudging smile, she said, “You can’t see nothing but his eyes, and you had less than a minute to see them, and you weren’t close. What makes you think it wasn’t Badger?”
Aloud, she said, “The helmet is higher above the steering wheel than it ought to be. Guy’s too tall to be Badger.”
Tuggle squinted at her for a long minute while nobody moved. “What’s your name?” she said.
“Taran Stiles.” She could feel the other women edging away from her, in case a blast of wrath was forthcoming from the crew chief.
Tuggle nodded, and made a note on her clipboard. “Well, Taran Stiles,” she said, “as it happens, you are correct. The driver for today’s exercise is Tony Lafon, one of our shop dogs, and he is indeed taller than Badger. You’re not. Generally, we want big people on pit crew, but occasionally it helps to have a runt around. So if your physical skills are as good as your powers of observation, you might make the team. Now get going, you seven!”
Afterward, Taran marveled at how nervous she had been for a job that paid only a fraction of what she had been making in the corporate world. She had never thought of herself as a particularly athletic person, and heretofore her competitive instincts had been confined to making the highest score on the exam, but during the tryouts she found herself trying harder than she ever had in any physical activity. The girl who had been content to coast through required courses in physical education suddenly demanded that her body respond like a well-oiled machine, because she
And she got it.
Someone from the team had called her the next day to tell her that she was now a member of Badger Jenkins’s pit crew. Well, they didn’t put it like that, of course. They thought of themselves by number and sponsor and owner. The 86 car; Team Vagenya. To the front office, Badger was just a cog in a money-making machine, but he was what mattered to her. For a fleeting moment she wondered who else had made the cut. Well, she would find out soon enough. There was a team meeting at the end of the week, the beginning of the long process of getting a bunch of novices ready for competition at the highest level of motorsports. First, though, she had to call Matt Troxler back at the old office and tell him that his worst fear had been realized: He had talked someone into a NASCAR career!
Taran went in that Friday to meet her new teammates. Later, she wondered if all randomly assembled groups of people constituted an assortment of types resembling the cast of old war movies. There was Taran herself, the dreamy romantic, who was the catch-can person. Reve Galloway, the gruff crusading fitness worker from California, was the gasman, because she was strong enough to lift a seventy-pound container of fuel.
The hockey playing student reading
