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How Brehanna Daniels Is Changing NASCAR, One Tire At A Time
Races are won by more than just drivers. They’re won by people like Brehanna Daniels, who changes the rear tires on a NASCAR race car by jumping over a wall and onto pit road, sliding to the opposite side of the car and getting to work on a tire—all while other race cars are whizzing by. Daniels slams five lug nuts with a hydraulic wrench, removes the old tire, and slams on a new one in the same manner. She has to hit all five lug nuts in about a second, then she runs to the other side of the car and does it all again.
It is not a job for the faint of heart, or the slow.
And if there’s one thing Daniels says again and again when she goes to work, it’s that she truly believes “times are changing.” She’s leading some of that long overdue change in NASCAR, as a face who looks different from the rest—an African-American woman on a NASCAR national pit crew to jump over the wall to service a car, the first to ever do such a job.
She now finds herself an unlikely trailblazer in a deeply Southern sport that has often struggled with diversity and with growing beyond its core audience.
This weekend at Daytona International Speedway, she’ll go over the wall in the highest level of NASCAR—the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. Daniels and her roommate Breanna O’Leary will pit Ray Black Jr.’s No. 51 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, a lower-funded Cup Series car, during a 400-mile race on Saturday night.
Daniels regularly changes tires for the No. 55 car at JP Motorsports, a team in the second-tier Xfinity Series with less funding than many competitors. Her team’s pit box is smaller than most others, many of which are development branches for top-level Cup Series teams with top-level cash.
That doesn’t stop her from drawing a crowd around the stall, as she makes peace signs and poses for selfies—even as the race is about to start—in front handfuls of camera people and spectators recording her at work.
“I saw this old man one day, he was recording me with his flip phone when I was cleaning and gluing my tires,” Daniels told Jalopnik at Texas Motor Speedway in April, where her race was cut short due to an electrical issue with the car after 53 of 200 laps. She re-enacted the scene with an imaginary phone in her hands. “He was like ‘Girl, you just keep doing your thing.’”
