NASCAR: Who’s Hot And Who’s Not Heading Into Richmond

Kevin Liles-USA TODAY Sports

HOT -Joe Gibbs Racing’s New Air Guns

Sunday night in Atlanta Kevin Harvick had the car to beat on the track and he most likely would have won the race if he wasn’t forced to take almost every restart from the outside lane. The reason he was forced to take the outside restarts was mostly because of the pit crews of JGR cars Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth. Hamlin and Kenseth each beat Harvick out of the pits multiple times throughout the night, Hamlin at one point had a 11.0 second stop in which he got four tires and two full cans of fuel. Aside from good pit work the other thing being credited for the fast stops are some sort of new air gun technology that the JGR teams are using. After the race, Kenseth would not go into details about the new technology, saying he honestly had no idea, but credited the organization’s training skills for the fast stops. It would appear that JGR has a leg up for the time being with this new generation of air guns; this could payoff for Kenseth, Hamlin and Kyle Busch come chase time.