It’s no secret that the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing pit crew of Denny Hamlin’s car this season is in a slump. This was a crew leading the charts in individual and average pit stop time for the first quarter of the 2024 season. But as the playoffs approached, things seemingly started to fall apart, leaving the fate of Hamlin’s appearance in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 round at Phoenix in uncertain hands. 

It’s not that a driver’s performance can’t make an impact on a race, but a pit crew can certainly make or break it. We saw this with the No. 11 crew’s heroic performance in the final laps of the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway in March. Hamlin entered pit lane in third but his pit crew sent him out into first place as they beat the crews of the two leading cars by over a second. We’ve also seen the flip side of this over the summer as the No. 11 crew moved too quickly during a pit stop at the Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway that resulted in having to jack the car back up to tighten a right rear wheel which lost them over ten positions while sitting on pit road.

“They were just outlier good,” shared the No. 11’s Crew Chief, Chris Gabehart. “My group is a hard working group, very analytical group and they kind of tried to make that better but couldn’t. Then they got into some injuries — that has probably not been very high profile for eight, or ten, maybe twelve races changed the way they could approach the week.”

Denny Hamlin, Joe Gibbs Racing, Yahoo! Toyota Camry

Photo by: John Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images

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Top tier NASCAR pit crews spend about three to four days per week on practice and preparation for races. The daily schedule is typically set up in multiple hourly blocks split between things like pit stop practice, weight training, cardio, rehab, and film review. With NASCAR racing on so many different types of tracks, this means that there are typically new positions for things like the wheels each week because of changes to suspension setups. So the pit crew needs weekly practice to get used to that new specific setup. Organizations like Joe Gibbs Racing also have development pit crew members that they can use as backups, for instance to use when one of their crewmates are injured, but pit stops require so much chemistry and tight choreography that it can take weeks for a new member of crew to get into that rhythm, let alone adjust for the unique setups from track to track.

“When you’re hurt you can’t practice like you were, especially when you were thrashing every week when that’s kind of your style. So, they had to throttle back a little bit,” Gabehart said. “Then the pressure of the playoffs comes and it’s very disjointed as you know. You go from an Atlanta to a Talladega to a road course, and for a pit crew it’s hard to find a weekly rhythm because races aren’t pit-crew focused. Then you’re expected to step up at Kansas and perform and step up at Bristol and perform — so I think it’s been a rhythm thing for that group coupled with the pressure of the playoffs as any pit crew is going to live. We’ve seen that.”

Based on Gabehart comments it’s easy to see how lower profile injuries can impact the success of a pit crew. Having races like Atlanta and Watkins Glen to start the playoffs doesn’t help restore that cadence either, as those races are more reliant on fuel fill time than tire change time, so it wasn’t until Bristol before the crew had an opportunity to follow a rhythm where they needed to complete fast tire changes. 

They still had some hiccups after that but Gabehart is confident in their performance and what he observed at Homestead last weekend.

“The speed and the greatness is still there, we just got to put a whole race together.”

Enzo Fittipaldi will slide in the cockpit for an evaluation test in IndyCar machinery with Arrow McLaren later this month at The Thermal Club, the team confirmed on Friday.

The 23-year-old Miami-born Brazilian American currently competes in Formula 2 with Van Amersfoort Racing, where he currently has one win and two podiums and sits 12th in the championship standings. 

Arrow McLaren, which has already set next year’s lineup with Pato O’Ward, Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel, confirmed the news via a statement:

“Arrow McLaren will satisfy their allotted evaluation test with Enzo Fittipaldi at The Thermal Club on Tuesday, November 19,” the statement read. “Each lap in our cars is important as we continue preparations for the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season, and we’re proud to extend this one to Enzo, whose family is so closely connected to the history of McLaren Racing.

“We’re eager to collect learnings and apply them in the form of a points race at The Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix on March 23. For removal of doubt, our 2025 lineup is firm with Pato, Nolan and Christian.”

Pietro Fittipaldi, Enzo Fittipaldi in October 2023 at Sebring International Raceway.

Photo by: Dale Coyne Racing

The grandson of two-time Formula 1 World Champion and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Emerson Fittipaldi, Enzo is also the brother of Pietro Fittipaldi. Pietro is a reserve driver for Haas F1 Team, who also just completed his first full-time IndyCar season with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

This will mark just the second time that Enzo, the 2018 Italian Formula 4 champion, has driven an IndyCar. In October 2023, he pounded laps at Sebring International Raceway for Dale Coyne Racing, sharing the track with brother Pietro, who was testing with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing at that time.

The upcoming test with Arrow McLaren is set for Nov. 19 just outside of Palm Springs, California, the venue that previously hosted the $1 Million Challenge — a non-points exhibition for the IndyCar Series — during the 2024 season. The Thermal Club will next host a championship round in North America’s premier open-wheel champion on March 23, 2025.

Verstappen and Russell then lowered the first place benchmark, before Perez nipped ahead on a 1m12.099s.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

That stood as the top spot for a little while, before Russell and then Verstappen got back ahead with 1m11.806s and 1m11.712s efforts respectively.

After a lull in action to allow for initial set-up adjustments, the drivers headed back out on the same rubber as before – with Hamilton climbing the order to sit second with his first timed lap back on track.

Approaching the final third, Russell made an early switch to the softs and duly retook first with a 1m10.791s, but it took a chunk more of the session before any more of the frontrunners did likewise.

That looked to be toppled when Verstappen went quicker than Russell in sector one on his first flier on the softs in the closing minutes, before the Dutchman lost enough time in sector two to be behind the benchmark and he then aborted the lap in any case.

This confined Verstappen to 15th with his best time coming from the mediums, while Perez did complete a softs run that was only good for 19th in the replaced chassis he is running this weekend.

Russell was finally beaten with Norris’s final lap in the closing minute, as the McLaren driver posted a 1m10.610s, which did not feature Norris’s best final sector on the session.

Hamilton did not run the softs and so ended up 16th in a session where there was much driver feedback on savage bumps in the new track surface.

Sao Paulo Grand Prix – Free Practice 1

Max Verstappen will take a five-place grid penalty for an engine change for Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, as he moves on to his sixth internal combustion engine of the 2024 Formula 1 season.

The championship leader had already taken a new ICE beyond the allowable limit of four at July’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, this being the third successive year that Red Bull had chosen to take the hit at that circuit.

Following a series of power unit issues in Mexico’s Friday sessions, as an air leak kept Verstappen confined to the garage during the final part of FP1 and the majority of FP2, Red Bull has chosen to take another engine from outside its pool.

This means that Verstappen will lose five places from wherever he qualifies for Sunday’s grand prix, although his sprint race qualifying result will be unaffected.

Verstappen will also use a new exhaust system, taking him up to eight used throughout the season, with eight permitted through the year.

The Dutchman has been in an increasingly precarious situation with his engine allowance for much of the season, as a problem with one unit in practice for the Canadian Grand Prix in June led to a lengthy inspection – leading to a fourth ICE being used as early as Spain.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

This led to Red Bull taking a new Honda powerplant at Spa, but Verstappen has now lost another from his pool as a result of the issues in Mexico.

Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko told Austrian broadcaster ORF that the engine eventually used at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez “was no longer intended for the race, and the older an engine gets, the more its performance diminishes.”

He added that the Red Bull was giving up approximately “three to eight km/h on the straights” thanks to the reduction in horsepower.

Asked on Thursday if Brazil was one of the less compromising races to take a power unit penalty, Verstappen responded that it was not a certainty that he could recover ground lost to a penalty.

“That is something that is always unknown. You think that one particular track is the best place to take an engine or whatever penalty, but it’s never guaranteed. But yeah, it’s a possibility.”

Sergio Perez has changed chassis for the Brazilian Grand Prix after Red Bull agreed to a request from the struggling Mexican driver.

In the wake of a hugely disappointing home outing for Perez in Mexico City last weekend, he has been looking for answers about why his form has been so disappointing in recent outings.

Red Bull has now confirmed that as part of its bid to do everything possible to help its driver, the team has agreed to swap chassis for this weekend’s Interlagos event to see if that brings any improvement.

Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan said: “We’ve changed him back into a different chassis, which we can do.

“He asked if we can, and we said fine. The boys have got a bit of work, but they didn’t mind.”

Monaghan clarified that this was a chassis that had been used previously this year, rather than being brand new.

“We don’t make a new one at this point of the season,” he said.

While he has been given a different chassis, Perez will continue to run an older-specification floor in Brazil compared to team-mate Max Verstappen – but hopes he will have the same spec by Las Vegas.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB20, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Speaking about the new floor, Perez said: “We don’t have it at the moment. Hopefully for Vegas, as there will be a little bit more time.

“[It means] we are carrying a little bit of weight, and it is not ideal, but the team is doing the best they can.”

Monaghan has played down the differences though, suggesting the detailed tweaks are not that major to lead to a lap time deficit.

“Checo is on a different edge specification from Max,” said Monaghan. “So, if you look at the edge wing itself, it’s subtly different. It’s a small difference.

“The magnitude is, I would argue, small enough that it’s not going to cause him to have a significant difference to Max.

“We’ve done it like that purely and simply because it’s the best way to service two cars and ensure that we can service them fairly with spares.”

Red Bull also said that the brake problems that Perez complained about hurting his pace in Mexico were nothing major.

“I don’t know there was anything particularly wrong with the car, but the brake material, we don’t put it on for multiple events,” he added.

“We can vary the temperature of the brakes. Equally he can vary them if he sits in traffic and so on. But I think we’ve resolved the doubts we have over those.”

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