Hendrick Motorsports turned to among the best at pit crew assembly to shore up service at the Twelve Hours of Sebring for Jimmie Johnson, Simon Pagenaud and Kamui Kobayashi.
Chad Knaus, the former crew chief who guided Johnson to seven NASCAR Cup Series championships, personally selected the five-member pit crew that will pit the No. 48 Action Express Cadillac during Saturday’s race at Sebring International Raceway.
The sports car classic will be the first of three more Michelin Endurance Cup races this season for the Ally-sponsored No. 48, which finished second in the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
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Though the all-star lineup gelled well in the season opener, the team’s pit stops were off the pace (as noted recently by Kobayashi).
Knaus, who became Hendrick’s vice president of competition last year, has picked Scott Honan, Cody French, Mike Hubert, Mike McAndrews and Jamie Frady to pit the No. 48 at Sebring.
Honan is the only carryover from the pit crew at the Rolex 24 as Hendrick uses the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races partly in preparation for NASCAR’s move to the NextGen car (which has similar characteristics to the DPi cars, including single-lug wheels). French is the only crewmember currently making pit stops in NASCAR for Hendrick.
“The majority of them are from a mechanical background,” Knaus told Hendrick Motorsports in a story on its team website. “Maybe ex-pit crew members who have the mechanical aptitude of being situationally aware, so I picked those guys because of that. Guys who maybe have driven race cars before. Guys who have been on road crews before. Guys who built their own cars. Things of that nature are why those guys were picked.
“In an endurance race, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Anything can break. Anything can fall off. You can crash. All those things, you’ve got to be prepared. Mechanical aptitude is pretty high in the decision-making process.”
Johnson will be making his debut at the iconic road course, which will mark his final IMSA tune-up before his rookie season in the NTT IndyCar Series. He will be teamed with Kobayashi and Pagenaud for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen International on June 27 and the Motul Petit Le Mans season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta on Nov. 13.
The expansion of the team’s schedule happened abruptly after Daytona. Johnson told Holly Cain of the IMSA Wire Service that “literally going to the airport following the Rolex race, the CEO and CMO of Ally said, ‘We need to talk to you tomorrow, this is amazing.’ Mr. (Rick) Hendrick is like, ‘We need to do more of this. This is amazing.’ And (IMSA and NASCAR Chairman and co-owner of Action Express) Jim France was saying, ‘How can we make this happen?’
“So literally Sunday afternoon (the day of the Rolex 24 finish) and then Monday morning before 8 o’clock – before I had my kids dropped off at school – I had a pretty darn good idea it was going to happen. There was a lot of momentum. Everybody kind of felt the same. There were some things to iron out, but the real momentum was there and everybody wanted to make it happen.”
Knaus also will be at the 69th running of Sebring, though he joked that he wasn’t that important at Daytona aside from getting “a couple of guys coffee a few times.
“I just tried to help with the communication from Jimmie with the crew chief and the engineer down there,” Knaus told the Hendrick website. “Because I know Jimmie pretty well.”
Jimmie Johnson pit crew overhauled for 12 Hours of Sebring by Hendrick VP Chad Knaus originally appeared on NBCSports.com