Last week, we at A Sip of Sports had the opportunity to experience Bristol Motor Speedway from behind the scenes. Bristol is one of the great sporting venues in the country and it was a magnificent experience.

One of the things I came away with was interest in the pit crews. They experience intense pressure followed by extreme down time repeated over and over for the span of 4 hours. It was fascinating to see what kind of people chose the pit crew life. What each member of the crew did and how they spent their down time.

As a former competitive swimmer it reminded me a lot of my sport. In swimming you train and train for hours to go to a swim meet. Swim meets during your youth are 4 hour long marathon of events that try a parents patience. But as the athlete you wait around for hours but when your time to swim comes up you have to be ready and at peak performance for a couple seconds to a couple of minutes of athletic competition to then return to a state of boredom.

This is a very similar cycle to NASCAR pit crews.

Here are some fun photos  taken from our backstage access.