Ex-FIU, Columbus wide receiver standout now works with a NASCAR pit-crew
Football was over.
Austin Maloney, who had been a star wide receiver at Miami Columbus High and at FIU, was working at Portofino Wine Bank in 2022.
“I would deliver liquor on a golf cart,” Maloney said. “It was basically selling wine to people on Star Island and in the Nikki Beach area.”
However, Maloney’s life changed forever when he got a call from Nick McBeath, a former teammate at Columbus who had gone on to play college football as a linebacker at Holy Cross. After football, McBeath had been hired by NASCAR as a pit-crew member, and now he was recommending Maloney to follow his example.
Fast-forward four years, and Maloney is the front-tire changer for Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin No. 11 car, a job that pays well over $100,000 annually. In fact, Maloney, now 29, is on one of top pit crews in all of the NASCAR Cup Series.
“Austin has done a good job of learning a skill he had no idea he possessed,” said Brian Haaland, who is the head pit-stop coach for Joe Gibbs Racing. “If you would’ve asked Austin five years ago if he would be doing this, I’m sure his answer would be, ‘Heck no.’ Nobody grows up playing ‘pit crew’ on the playground.”
Haaland said Maloney is highly coachable and elite in terms of athleticism.
“He’s very quick,” Haaland said. “Because we have all these analytics, when we compared him to all the tire changers we collected data on, he showed he was more athletic than all those guys.”
Chris Merritt, who was Maloney’s coach at Columbus and is now the head coach at Bryant University, has fond memories of his former player.
Merritt said Maloney was an excellent receiver but had trouble — early in his prep career — beating press coverage.
“For his first three years at Columbus, if the opposing cornerback played press coverage, you might as well have given Austin a pair of maracas,” Merritt joked, “because he wasn’t getting open.”
Prior to his senior year, Maloney worked extremely hard to correct his weakness.
“The angrier I made him with my comments,” Merritt said, “the harder he worked.”
As a senior, the new-and-improved Maloney earned first-team All-Dade honors, leading the 2015 Explorers to a 13-2 record and the Class 8A state semifinals.
Maloney was also successful at FIU, breaking the program bowl-game record for most catches (10) and most receiving yards (178). In four years with the Panthers, he caught 104 passes for 1,738 yards and nine TDs.
And, after wrapping up his FIU career in 2019, Maloney was looking forward to what he considered the most important “job interview” of his life — FIU’s Pro Day in the spring of 2020.
But that’s went COVID hit the world. FIU’s Pro Day was cancelled, Maloney went undrafted and unsigned, ending up doing some odd jobs instead of playing pro football. Those jobs included industrial painting in Albany, Georgia; and a door-to-door home-security sales venture in Memphis.
“It was freezing cold in Memphis,” Maloney said with a laugh. “I quit that job without making a single sale.”
His NASCAR career has been a much better fit.
After McBeath’s recommendation, Maloney was flown to Charlotte, where the Gibbs team put him through a series of drills, testing his quickness, strength and more.
Maloney wasn’t hired immediately. In fact, it took five months, during which time Maloney kept calling Gibbs Racing until he essentially wore them down. Then, once he was hired, he toiled in the development program as opposed to the Cup Series, which is comparable to NASCAR’s major leagues.
But, finally, an injury to a front-tire changer, cleared the way for Maloney to move up to the Cup Series, and he made his debut with Denny Hamlin’s pit crew last year.
“Austin was patient,” Haaland said. “When we had the injury, (fellow coach Chris Burkey) and I decided to put Austin in there, not knowing 100 percent what would happen. But Austin took off.”
PIT CREW HISTORY
NASCAR dates back to 1948, and, for the first four decades of the league’s existence, the pit crew was populated, typically, by mechanics.
Then, in 1992, Hendrick Motorsports hired former Stanford football player Andy Papathanassiou as the first-ever pit-crew coach. By the early 2000s, using ex-college and pro football players on pit crews had become a trend.
Haaland, who is in his 24th season in NASCAR, said the change in pit crews is obvious.
“In the old days, we used guys from the shop,” Haaland said. “They were athletes, but they also had responsibilities building our cars. Now, we’ve gone to specialized athletes.”
Every car’s pit stop includes fuel and four new tires, and these are tasks performed by a six-man pit crew that includes a jackman, who uses a 20-pound jack to lift both the left and right sides of the car, allowing for tire changes. There are two tire carriers, who each carry two new 50-pound tires over the wall, mounting them on the car. There are two tire changers, front side and rear side, who use air wrenches to loosen the single lug nut on the old tires and tighten the lug on the new tires. And, finally, there’s a gas man, who refuels the car.
A few years ago, when NASCAR Cup Series cars had five lug nuts, a good pit stop was 11.0 seconds. When the cars went to a single lug in 2022, a good stop was 10.5 seconds.
Last year, Maloney and his teammates broke the NASCAR record by getting a pit stop done in 8.02 seconds.
This year, though, another Gibbs Racing crew broke that record with a time of 7.98 seconds. In practice, Haaland said his crews are posting 7.3-second pit stops.
“Hand-eye coordination and consistency are huge,” Maloney said when asked what’s required to do his job well.
With the cars so even in terms of speed these days, the pit stops are often where races are won or lost.
So, in an effort to modernize, pit crews now have a football mentality.
The guys have film study. They lift weights and do conditioning drills. They focus on nutrition, and they practice during the week to get ready for the big event on Sunday.
Maloney said the transition from football to NASCAR has been natural.
“Football players are used to pressure,” Maloney said. “We won’t panic when things go wrong.”
Speaking of weight training, Maloney, a 6-footer, has gotten much stronger in his NASCAR career. He has gone from 190 pounds during his FIU days to about 220 pounds now.
Merritt, a big NASCAR fan who is still close to Maloney, said he saw his former player recently.
“I said, ‘It’s about time you found the weight room,’” Merritt joked. “Austin used to be a skinny bird.”
As for expected longevity, Haaland said he sees no reason why Maloney can’t continue his tire-changer career going for a lot longer.
“The way Austin takes care of himself, and the way he is performing,” Haaland said, “I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t go until his early 40s.”