DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Every racing fan has a favorite driver or maybe a favorite team, but most people don’t even think about the hundreds of individuals it takes to keep a place like the track at Daytona International Speedway safe.
On pit lane, those individuals are the 14 officials headed up by Johnny Knotts — IMSA’s Head Pit Lane Official and Logistics.
Trooper Steve Montiero spent a few days at the Speedway ahead of the Rolex 24 to check out all the ins and outs of safety when it comes to IMSA races and of course, that meant checking out pit lane, as well.
STEVE: You’re out here. You got the swag on, you are the official. How did you end up here?
JOHNNY: I will tell you at one point in my life, many years ago, I aspired to be a driver. And I went to the Porsche Driving Experience and then part of the Panoz Racing School, which was really a part of the American Le Mans Series, which was a part of IMSA. And I laugh about this, I say this all the time, I wasn’t very good. And then I kind of realized that I wasn’t willing to go 190 miles an hour, and a pit official job came open. I took it and the rest is history.
STEVE: So you are the lead pit lane official? That sounds like a pretty big deal, what does that mean?
JOHNNY: It is a big deal. But I gotta tell you, it’s a very cool deal. I’m going to talk about my staff a little bit. We have 13 pit officials that work under me. And I’m very proud to say this for IMSA, 50% of my staff are women. So we were one of the first motorsport series to actually introduce women out on a hot pit lane and they do a fantastic job. So I’m very proud of that. But yeah, it is a very big deal. And probably the most important aspect of what pit officials do besides observe and reporting infractions up to race control, is we’re the liaison to communication between race control and the teams. So even though we have telemetry as far as instant messaging like texting from teams to race control, there are some times where there has to be face-to-face conversations. And that’s where we really come in handy as far as being a pit lane official.
STEVE: So when you say, having these conversations, are you responsible for rules out here? Are you responsible for safety violations?
JOHNNY: So everything that happens out on the pit lane, the pit officials are responsible for. Now, like I said earlier, our job is to witness and observe and then report what we see up to race control. It’s no different than basically like if you’re an NFL referee or a college football referee, we’re watching penalties. I have to say one of the things that we do an excellent job of, we are 100%. Before we make our call, we have to be 100%. So if you look down the pit lane, and as you see the equipment, this is a lot of money involved, there’s a lot of money involved in this and the customers. And this is how i deal, you know, think of as our competitors as their customers. And I am real big, it’s all about customer service. So as we officiate, we’re always communicating with the teams, with the idea in the back of their head, we’re servicing our customers, we’re going to explain to them what the infraction that we saw before we even call anything, then we relay it up to race control, race control makes a decision or talks to me one-on-one, and then they’ll come back with a decision. I can tell you the worst thing in a car race, and one of our penalties, is a drive-through penalty. Say like, we have too many crew members working on a car, they’ll give it a drive-through, that will take the car off the track and make it drive through the pit lane. So you can imagine if you’re a driver and say you’re winning the race, all of a sudden you get a drive-through penalty. Imagine from going 190 mph down to our pit lane speed of 60 kilometers, which is 37.8 miles an hour. So imagine going that speed and all of a sudden you have to drive through pit lane at 37.8 miles per hour. Frustrating, very frustrating. Like most of the time, ‘m the most popular guy out here, but when something like that happens, I’m the least popular.
STEVE: People love when I’m funny on TV, but if I’m pulling them over, like...
JOHNNY: Same thing, Same thing.
STEVE: But when you’ve got these cars pulling in here, they’re scheduled for their maintenance to come in. So they’re not all coming in at the same time.
JOHNNY: That’s correct. That’s correct.
STEVE: But now there are rules to this, you can’t just pull up and start.
JOHNNY: No, that is correct. As the cars come into the pit lane, one of the first things that as a pit official, we’re looking for, is making sure that the car is properly parked, as we say, in front of the pit box. So if you look here, you can see that there’s tape which is a boundary line. So this would be the front of the car front boundary line and you can see 20 feet towards the pit inside is the other boundary. So when a car comes in, before any work can be done on the car, the car has to be properly placed inside the pit box okay and if it’s not, say for example, if a car overshoots through pit box, as we like to say, the nose went beyond two feet out, and the crew members jumped down on the ground and start working on the car, that’s an infraction we call working on the car outside of the box.
STEVE: What is the craziest thing you’ve seen in a pit?
JOHNNY: Most common thing, and this isn’t really an infraction, but it’s the most dangerous aspect of our job, is fire. And, which, is tied to an infraction. So as you can see, if you’re looking down with our series, they refuel from a fuel rig. So they’re basically plugged into the car. So it has to be a perfect timing between the driver exiting the pit box and when the refueler pulls the refueling probe out. So say for example, if the driver accelerates out of the pit box, and they’re still plugged in that day, it’s going to come out, fuel is going to spill and there could be a fire. I’ve been a part of three or four fires. One last year, that was very close.
STEVE: You truly have to be aware of everything, it’s not just driving the car.
JOHNNY: I can tell you from my past driving experience, it’s not how fast you go. It’s how we how well you brake the car, how well the brakes work. That’s where you gain speed. Anybody can press the gas pedal and go fast. But do you have what it takes to take a car way into the corner, hit the brakes and hit the apex and come out at the end of the turn perfectly? That’s the skill.
STEVE: I’ve asked everyone this question. The coolest thing about being and doing what you do?
JOHNNY: I have to say the coolest thing is dealing with the people involved with this, you know, and that’s what makes this sport. Everybody out here, motorsports is a family, you know, and we really take care of each other. And we might disagree or argue, but I guarantee when the season’s over, the first thing we’re saying the next day is, ‘I can’t wait to get back to the track to see my friends.’