Doyel: Buddy Lazier's pit crew is a Disney movie
Gregg Doyel
INDIANAPOLIS – Bob Caudle, the man who will change the left rear tire on Buddy Lazier’s car in the 2017 Indianapolis 500, gets me alone Friday in Lazier’s garage. Caudle knows I’m going to write a story about Lazier’s underdog pit crew, the four firemen from Texas, the four brothers who on Sunday will jump over the wall on pit road and enter a world they have seen mostly on YouTube.
He knows I’m going to get this wrong.
“At every major call I’ve ever been on,” Bob Caudle says, referring to his 31-year career in Texas as a firefighter, “and I’m talking about fires, murders, suicides — anything where the media gets involved — they always make a major mistake. Every time.”
I’m smiling at him, because the story he and his brothers have just told me — the story I’m writing right here — is so absurd that every bit of it looks like a major mistake, a series of exaggerations if not outright lies.
Buddy Lazier, winner of the 1996 Indy 500, assures me it’s all true.
“Oh, you’ve got it right,” Lazier tells me. “Nobody is lying to you.”
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I guess we’ll just begin at the beginning, with the Caudle brothers standing around me in a semicircle inside Lazier’s garage. They’re from Texas, as I said. They’re not full-time pit crew members — they’re active firefighters with a combined 118 years experience with the Irving (Texas) Fire Department.
So I’m asking these guys: How long have you been changing tires at this level?
Craig Caudle, the youngest of the four Caudle brothers at 46, answers that question with one of his own:
“What’s today?”
Now Ken Caudle, the next youngest brother at 53, has another question:
“What time is it?”
And they’re serious. After a 10-day crash course in Pit Crew 101, the Caudle brothers will be jumping over the wall Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, changing the tires and pouring fuel into Lazier’s Chevrolet in their IndyCar debut. They are not just the oldest (average age: 53), least experienced pit crew in the 2017 field. They are surely one of the oldest, least experienced pit crews in Indy 500 history.
In an era where big-money racing teams recruit former NFL athletes and devote serious time and money to the conditioning and development of their pit crews, Lazier will be racing Sunday with a pit crew that has had to be shown this month how to do every step of its critical — and dangerous — job. It was the 2015 Indy 500 when two members of the Dale Coyne Racing pit crew were hit during a three-car accident on pit road.
Jim Caudle, the oldest of the brothers at 57 — Bob is next at 55 — has the crew’s most dangerous job Sunday. He changes the right rear tire, which means he has to dart around Lazier’s car an instant after it stops, mindful that he is the crew member most exposed to other cars entering pit road at close to 50 mph.
No worries, Jim Caudle says.
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“There are five major freeways in Irving, and we’re always working in the middle of traffic,” he was saying Friday after Carb Day. “We did our first hot car today, and once I jumped out there, I literally didn’t think one time about the cars around me.”
Pay attention to that part about the Caudle brothers doing their “first hot car” on Carb Day. What that means: Until Friday, they had practiced refueling and changing tires only on a car that hadn’t come flying onto pit road. Until Friday, they practiced on a car that was just sitting there.
Lazier crew chief Mitch Davis, an IndyCar veteran who has worked for names such as Rahal, Ganassi and Coyne, has been teaching the Caudle brothers when to jump over the wall, where to stand, what to do.
Lazier insists he is not worried.
“Not at all,” he says. “Mitch Davis is great at teaching, and these guys don’t have any bad habits. They’re a blank page.”
Don’t get it twisted: The Caudle brothers know their way around a garage. In fact, it is the family’s love of automobile racing that brought them to Lazier’s garage in the first place. It was 2014 when Jim Caudle brought a 1969 Corvette to IMS for the SVRA Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational. At the pro-am, where the SVRA amateurs are paired with a former Indy 500 driver, Jim Caudle was paired with Bob Lazier, Buddy’s father.
“We’ve become great friends,” Jim Caudle says.
They have entered the SVRA pro-am at IMS every year since 2014 — winning in 2015 — and last year Jim asked Bob Lazier if he and his brothers could work on Buddy’s car in the 2017 Indy 500.
“Absolutely,” Bob Lazier said. “What do you want to do?”
“Go over the wall with the pit crew,” Caudle said.
Done. Because this is how Buddy Lazier races these days.
Once one of the dominant drivers on the IndyCar tour, the 2000 series champion and a four-time race winner in 2001 who finished second overall that tear, Lazier races just once a year anymore: at the Indy 500. He annually cobbles together a makeshift team with a budget he would describe for me only as “limited.” Most drivers in the field Sunday will have a chief engineer, crew chief and team manager. Lazier will have those, too, but they will be the same person: Mitch Davis.
Davis also will be working on the pit crew, changing the right front tire.
After his car showed up this year with a handful of missing parts, including the steering wheel, it wasn’t until the day before qualifying that Lazier’s car was ready to go onto the track for practice. While most Indy 500 cars are getting 200 or more oval practice laps at IMS, Lazier says he took 30 laps — all on Friday — before qualifying Saturday/Sunday in 30th place in the 33-car field.
The Caudle brothers also arrived late this past week, supplementing their tutorials from Davis with some online research of their own.
“The fastest teams can get the job done in seven seconds or less,” Craig Caudle is telling me. “I saw that on YouTube.”
It’s a Disney movie, what’s happening in Buddy Lazier’s garage. And it’ll be an adventure, what happens Sunday on pit road.
The 101st running of the Indianapolis 500 starts at 12:19 p.m. Sunday. Hear it on 1070-AM, 97.1-FM or 107.9-FM. Follow our blog on IndyStar.com, where you'll also find photo galleries from the track.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.