In racing, it’s all about who you know. The more contacts you’ve got in the sport, the better off your career will be. And with contacts comes the opportunity to do a little moonlighting. Good over-the-wall guys can often be hard to find, and if a talented changer, carrier, or jackman makes it known that he’s available for outside work, chances are his phone will be busy.
If a guy works full time for a team, and they’ll allow him to do outside work, moonlighting in other series can be a great opportunity to not only get a little more experience, but also make some extra money. Open crew positions can be had from Cup all the way to Hooters ProCup. Paychecks are normally around $200 a race for the lower series like ARCA and Hooters ProCup, and go up from there.
Open positions with teams usually are the result of injuries, people moving on, and layoffs. Also, many of the smaller teams don’t have the budget to have crew guys and pay for them to travel, so they’ll hire when they get to the track. That is why if you watch a race on TV for a lower series and you catch the pitstops, you’ll often see guys on one crew wearing all kinds of different firesuits.
Besides the extra money and added experience, these fill-in gigs can allow for further networking and could lead to full time spots in the future. Getting your name out there as a guy who can do a good job will get you noticed by the pit crew coaches at the major teams. And even if they don’t hire you for their teams directly, often they can help you find more opportunities through their own list of contacts.
So while you certainly won’t get rich changing tires, there is certainly money to be made if you don’t mind slumming a little and being a hired gun. And like we said many times in our So You Want to Work in NASCAR series, if you are trying to get in or are new in racing, network like crazy.
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on Aug 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
How do you moonlight if you are dependent upon the Cup team for transportation to a race and the flights are the morning of the Cup race?
on Aug 21st, 2008 at 4:05 pm
CVT: First, you are assuming all teams are able to fly in raceday, which means private aircraft. True for some, but not all. Second, not every pit crew member flys out raceday. I have no idea of percentages, but a lot of guys, especially at lower levels are mechanics too and thus are at the track for multiple days. Third, if you do fly out raceday, there are many races you can’t fly out raceday because the tracks are too far. If you have a 1PM race at Phoenix, you can’t leave Charlotte that morning. These kind of guys don’t just show up at race time. The normal rule of thumb is, is that guys need to be at the track at least 3-4 hours before the race starts to glue wheels and setup the pit area. And moonlighting doesn’t just happen with guys at the Cup level. Guys in all series do it.
on Aug 21st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Actually you can leave Charlotte at 8am and arrive Phoenix at 9am local time, leaving plenty of time for set-up. It might make an interesting thread to discuss the use of private ac, since they are used so widely.
on Aug 21st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Haha, well I guess you got me there. In my experience, when we go out to the west coast races, we’ll go the day before, which is why I mentioned Phoenix. And for those that fly commercial, you don’t often get non-stop flights to those places from Charlotte. The flights with stops always seem to be cheaper.
I’ll keep that private plane idea in mind…