At the door of the DGM Racing trailer, Janice Kennett sat peacefully in the double shade of a tent and her Chevrolet baseball cap.
She took advantage of a quiet moment between her caretaker duties for the racing team: Kennett washes all the drivers suits and ensures the team is stocked with cold drinks and snacks. She and her husband, Gary who drives the truck for the team have been with DGM Racing for four years. They drive to all 33 race weekends from their home in Lake Wales, Florida, where Kennett uses her own washing machine to do the teams laundry.
People work better when theyre taken care of, Kennett said.
Behind the many wire fences surrounding NASCARs fan area, dozens of trailers and hauling trucks are lined up like oversized dominoes. Back here, everyone wears long black pants or heavy suits, protecting themselves from the gasoline and asphalt that makes racing dangerous for the large crews that come with every driver.
This is the sweaty world of NASCAR, where mechanics lie belly-up beneath racecars, their hands covered in grime. Its not glamorous or easy, but this work is the lifeblood of American racing.
Late Saturday morning, water poured out from under the hood of Joey Gase Motorsports No. 53 car, driven by Sage Karam. Five team members, in green and black racing shirts, crowded around the vehicle. Sweat ran down everyones foreheads as one mechanic crawled under the car, and two others set up a tent to shield them from the sun as they worked.
Mechanics often perform this kind of maintenance. When drivers do their practice loops at the beginning of a race weekend, their cars accrue all sorts of damage. The JR Motorsports team had at least 12 people working on one of its cars, while the Joey Gase group did its repairs just a few trailers away.
Behind another fence, Sunoco employees distributed dozens of gas tanks. To their right, technicians from Goodyear Racing carefully studied piles of tires, which were stacked up all over the NASCAR area.
Getting tires to cars is one of the more complex aspects of a race. , the Goodyear Racing product manager for NASCAR, said that his company provides roughly 3,000 tires to cars every NASCAR race weekend. Cup Series vehicles get a maximum of seven pairs of tires for each race. XFinity Series cars get a maximum of six pairs. Most teams hold onto a pair or two of scuffs used tires as backups. Almost all the tires used in a race weekend are immediately recycled into rubber dust.
Heinrich and his team are usually the first to arrive at a race site. They have to unload and organize thousands of tires, and then collect data on every tire so that small manufacturing discrepancies can be accounted for and explained to teams, which receive tires at random.
You really cant help but to have an appreciation, or be somewhat of a fan of racing, when you work for Goodyear, Heinrich said, because, really, the core of the automotive business is racing.
If it rains, all those numbers change, and teams are allotted an additional four sets of wet-weather tires. Theyre necessary to prevent slippage when it rains, but will slow down a driver once the track dries up again.
The Chicago Street Race, with its imperfect asphalt and lines of yellow and white paint for average city drivers, offers an unusual track for Goodyear tires. That aspect, however, is out of Heinrichs hands.
Thats why this place is so special, Heinrich said. Its just different. Its not a purpose-built racetrack.
The five-person crew at Cope Family Racing would agree that this weekend is different. Usually, the team has a trailer with all of its tools right behind the pit box. But because the pit road area is so limited, in the middle of downtown Chicago, the crew had to park elsewhere and lug all the tools to the pit road.
Bradley Carson is one of three mechanics on the Cope team, which is the smallest as well as one of the newest in the series, not that it has limited XFinity driver Thomas Annunziata, who qualified in the middle of the pack for the Chicago Street Race.
Saturday afternoon, as the temperature climbed into the mid-80s, an oil-caked Carson was sitting on a tire in the shade of his teams pit box.
Im exhausted, he said.
He had every right to be. Carson, 62, who lives in Morrisville, North Carolina, and the two other mechanics on the team, rebuild Annunziatas car nearly every week and after a racing weekend, it requires a complete renewal. For Carson, a 19-hour day, four times a week, is nothing unusual.
He admitted that the job takes a lot. But he wouldnt give it up.
People are doing this because they want to do this, Carson said.
He got into motorsports as a 16-year-old not-always-legal drag racer in Los Angeles. Carson fell in love with the thrill of being around cars and stuck with it.
You build something and it comes to life, he said. Its a calling, in a sense something that drives inside of you.
在DGM Racing拖车的门口，贾尼斯·肯尼特（Janice Kennett）安静地坐着，帐篷和她戴着的雪佛兰棒球帽为她提供了双重荫凉。
肯妮特（Kennett）在赛车队的后勤工作中抽空休息片刻——她平时负责清洗所有车手的比赛服，并确保车队有充足的冷饮和零食供应。她和丈夫加里（Gary）已为DGM赛车队效力四年，加里负责驾驶车队卡车。夫妇俩从佛罗里达州莱克威尔士的家中出发，辗转参加全年33个比赛周末。期间肯妮特总是用自家的洗衣机为全队清洗衣物。
肯尼特表示：“当员工得到关怀时，他们的工作效率会更高。”
在纳斯卡赛车粉丝区周围层层铁丝网的后方，数十辆拖车和运输卡车如同巨型多米诺骨牌般整齐排列。这片区域里，所有人都穿着黑色长裤或厚重工装，以防护汽油和沥青的侵害——对于每位车手随行的大批工作人员而言，这些物质正是赛车运动危险性的来源。
这就是NASCAR赛事的汗水世界——机械师们仰面躺在赛车底盘下，双手沾满油污。这份工作既不光鲜也不轻松，但却是美国赛车运动的命脉所在。
周六上午晚些时候，乔伊·加斯赛车运动车队53号赛车（由塞奇·卡拉姆驾驶）的引擎盖下突然涌出水流。五名身着绿黑相间赛车服的队员迅速围拢过来。一名机械师钻入车底检修时，汗水顺着每个人的额头滚落，另两名队员则支起遮阳帐篷，为紧张作业的团队遮挡烈日。
这类维护工作通常由机械师完成。当车手在比赛周末伊始进行练习圈时，他们的赛车会累积各种损伤。JR Motorsports车队至少有12名工作人员在检修一辆赛车，而乔伊·盖斯（Joey Gase）团队的维修点就在几辆拖车开外。
在另一道围栏后方，Sunoco公司的员工正在分发数十个汽油罐。他们右侧，固特异赛车（Goodyear Racing）的技术人员正仔细研究成堆的轮胎——这些轮胎在NASCAR区域随处可见，堆积如山。
为赛车配备轮胎是赛事中较为复杂的环节之一。固特异赛车公司纳斯卡产品经理表示，该公司每个纳斯卡比赛周末需为赛车提供约3000条轮胎。杯系列赛车每场最多可使用七对轮胎，而XFinity系列赛车最多配备六对。多数车队会保留一两对磨损轮胎（即旧胎）作为备用。比赛周末使用过的轮胎几乎全部会被立即回收处理，制成橡胶颗粒。
海因里希（Heinrich）和他的团队通常是最早抵达比赛场地的。他们需要卸载并整理数千条轮胎，随后采集每条轮胎的数据，以便解释生产过程中的细微差异——这些轮胎是随机分配给各车队的。
海因里希表示："在固特异工作时，你难免会对赛车产生欣赏之情，甚至成为它的粉丝，因为汽车产业的核心其实就是赛车运动。"
若遇雨天，所有数据都将改变，各车队会额外分配到四套雨胎。这些轮胎在降雨时能有效防止打滑，但一旦赛道恢复干燥，反而会拖慢车手速度。
芝加哥街道赛的赛道由粗糙的沥青路面和普通城市驾驶员熟悉的黄白标线构成，对固特异轮胎而言是一条非常规赛道。不过这一特性并非海因里希所能掌控。
“这就是此地如此特别的原因，”海因里希说道，“它截然不同，并非专为比赛而建的赛道。”
科普家庭赛车队的五名成员一致认为这个周末非同寻常。通常情况下，车队会将装有全部工具的拖车直接停放在维修区后方。但由于芝加哥市中心的赛道维修区空间极为有限，队员们不得不将拖车停放在别处，并手动将所有工具搬运至维修区。
布拉德利·卡森（Bradley Carson）是科普车队的三名机械师之一。该车队不仅是该系列赛中规模最小的，也是最年轻的车队之一。尽管如此，这并未限制其车手托马斯·安农齐亚塔（Thomas Annunziata）的发挥——这位XFinity系列赛车手在芝加哥街道赛中取得了中游排位的成绩。
周六下午，当气温攀升至华氏85度左右时，满身油污的卡森（Carson）正坐在车队维修区遮阳棚下的轮胎上。
“我累坏了。”他说道。
他完全有理由如此。现年62岁的卡森（Carson）居住在北卡罗来纳州莫里斯维尔，他与团队中的另外两名机械师几乎每周都要重新组装安农齐亚塔（Annunziata）的赛车，而每个比赛周末结束后，车辆都需要彻底翻新。对卡森而言，每周四次、每天工作19小时早已是家常便饭。
他承认这份工作耗费心力，但绝不轻言放弃。
卡森表示：“人们这么做是因为他们自己想这么做。”
卡森16岁时在洛杉矶成为一名并不总是合法的直线竞速赛车手，由此进入赛车运动领域。他深深爱上了与车相伴的“刺激感”，并坚持至今。
"你创造的事物会变得栩栩如生，"他说道，"从某种意义上说，这是一种使命——一种深藏于内心的驱动力。"
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