For many years and in many cases, NASCAR pit crews were like being part of the U.S. Marines. The crew chief would be like a drill sergeant, shouting orders and sometimes even intimidating or criticizing personnel for mistakes. Trackhouse Racing is changing that hard-nosed militaristic attitude with a softer and more compassionate approach.<\/p>\n
Team owner Justin Marks\u2019 five-year-old organization hopes that less anxiety and a more humanistic approach with \u201cChief Kindness Officer\u201d Shaun Peet, aka the team\u2019s \u201cKindness Coach\u201d, will improve pit crews\u2019 mental, emotional and physical well-being both on- and off-track.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell people, I run the department of unrealistic expectations,\u201d Peet told Frontstretch. \u201cObviously, our job is to put four tires and two cans of fuel in the car in eight seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a motorsports enthusiast, racing is a hard business, and a lot of times we can\u2019t even be kind to ourselves. So we just have a different ethos at Trackhouse. Justin (Marks) wants to make sure that the employee experience and how people are valued at Trackhouse is different than any other race team experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team owner Justin Marks relies upon Peet\u2019s advice<\/p>\n
To illustrate Peet\u2019s value to the team, one day before Marks<\/a><\/strong> purchased the entire operation from Chip Ganassi in 2020, he visited Peet\u2019s home to get his advice and thoughts about the purchase and how to build out the program with a kinder but still very effective process.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the biggest misconceptions our fans have is that when a driver comes on pit road, that the time of the pit stop dictates everything about how they come off pit road,\u201d Peet said. \u201cNothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a bunch of elements that make up, when a driver pits for tires and comes out for a second, third or fourth. How does that driver get on pit road? Where do they stop? In the box, right? These boxes are marked, and if the driver puts it on the mark, we can attack the car. If the driver doesn\u2019t put it on the mark, we have to react to the car, and that takes time.<\/p>\n \u201cThird thing is the adjustments the crew chief gives us. If we come down pit road and we\u2019re putting two left rounds in the left rear, there\u2019s no way we\u2019re beating Chase Elliott off if he\u2019s straight up. And then it\u2019s how the driver reacts to the drop of the jack. How fast the pit stop is and how good the driver is leaving the box and his exit speed.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you have five or six things that go into that, but oftentimes, a driver will lose three stops on pit road, and everyone\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, the pit crew is terrible.\u2019 That is one of the narratives that I would love to see changed. It never will change, and we\u2019re fine with that, but that\u2019s one of the misconceptions that follows the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n How Peet went from minor league hockey enforcer and brawler to a \u201ckindness coach\u201d<\/p>\n Peet\u2019s story gets even more unusual, as he\u2019s a former minor league hockey player, self-professed enforcer, and unofficially designated brawler, where kindness oftentimes is met with punches on-ice. Peet not only oversees Trackhouse<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s four cars but also the organization\u2019s MotoGP program. How he got from playing hockey to his current role is an interesting story.<\/p>\n