CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the span of just 10 seconds, a NASCAR pit crew's execution can make or break a driver's race, or even the whole season.
Pit stops provide teams a chance to get the slightest advantage in races where a tenth of a second can prove vital down the line. But for as fast-paced as NASCAR is on the track, the sport's evolution in areas off the race track sometimes takes generations of work and progress.
Mike Metcalf knows both sides of these situations. He's worked nearly 20 years with NASCAR pit crews, most recently as a head pit crew coach and director of culture and community with Trackhouse Racing. Metcalf also co-owns Deck Leadership, a company that works with clients to create better teams using diversity, efficiency, culture, and kindness.
Metcalf's efforts in promoting diversity within the NASCAR sphere earned him the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Pit Crew Member Award. He will be honored along with nine others who received awards in various categories this weekend ahead of the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum.
"It's an incredible honor for me," Metcalf said. "Ironically, last year was probably the year where from an actual pit crew standpoint, I did the least amount of work."
During 2023, Metcalf worked in other areas of the sport organizing events for children interested in motorsports and handling other duties. He says the award is an accumulation of the work he's done in his career rather than just what he did last year.
Metcalf's career in motorsports began in 2005 after his time playing college football at Appalachian State came to an end. He was training to possibly sign on with a football league in Italy when a colleague he was training with got hired by Evernham Motorsports and asked Metcalf to come along.
"He said 'It's a race shop in Statesville.' And I'm like, 'Okay, what's a race shop?'," Metcalf jokingly remembered. "We had to do a 20-yard dash, cone drills, and workout stuff. And naturally, I had been training for those types of things [at football] so I excelled at it."
Ray Evernham instituted a trailblazing change to NASCAR in the 1990s when he was Jeff Gordon's crew chief by hiring former football players to change tires and gas cans for pit crews, rather than using mechanics as every other team did. He carried this mentality over when he started Evernham Motorsports in the 2000s.
This change provided athletes like Metcalf to showcase their skills on the race track, a career move he wasn't expecting to make growing up as the racing world was not something that was catered to his community at the time.
"I grew up in Charlotte. It's the racing capital but I didn't know anything about it," Metcalf said. "That wasn't something my community prioritized."
In his first year in NASCAR, Metcalf worked on Kasey Kahne's pit crew in 2006 and saw the team win six races that year. Despite him helping the team succeed, he says he felt out of place early on.
"People didn't love the fact that athletes were starting to come in because those were jobs for the mechanics," Metcalf said. "It wasn't always the warmest climate to be in the race shop. You had some people pulling for you, and you definitely had some people pulling against you."
Another challenge Metcalf faced was a lack of diversity in the garage area when he first started in the sport.
"When I started in '06, I was probably one of less than 10 Latino, black, or Asian people in the whole garage," Metcalf said. "Some days people said some things when they didn't know you're in there or fans just saying the craziest stuff to you. I had to eat a lot of stuff. But you still have to work and be a professional."
Metcalf says he was motivated to stick through the adversity in hopes that people from different backgrounds could continue to get hired in NASCAR.
He later worked for Red Bull Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing on different pit crews before joining Trackhouse Racing as a pit crew coach and director of culture. He says he's glad to see that people from different backgrounds are being better represented in NASCAR in the present and is hopeful the trend continues.
The best thing about working on a NASCAR pit crew was the intensity of a race starting after a long week of preparation. He also referenced the race to the airport after the NASCAR race as cherished memories.
Metcalf's advice for anyone interested in working in motorsports is to show teams that you want to be committed to being in the industry. He says to take any opportunities available and prepare to work hard.
The first action of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series takes place this weekend with the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum in Los Angeles. The first official race of the season is the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18.