From Super Bowl champion to NASCAR: Ex-NFLer finds second wind with Trackhouse pit crew
Josh Bush spends his days playing in traffic.
Instead of looking both ways before he crosses the street, he waits for the car to pull up and then jumps in front of it, air gun in hand.
He does it almost every day, for 38 weeks, during racing season, both outside the Trackhouse Racing base in Concord, North Carolina, and in the pit lanes at NASCAR tracks.
The rules of the road don’t apply to NASCAR pit crews — at least not during competition. They can’t, especially when the goal is to perfectly change four tires and fuel the car in fewer than 10 seconds.
You wouldn’t know it from sneaking a look at Bush at pit crew practice — his 5-foot-11 frame, clad in all-black Trackhouse gear paired with a white-and-black striped helmet — but just seven years ago, he was relishing in confetti on the field at Levi’s Stadium after winning Super Bowl 50 with the Denver Broncos.
Whether it’s changing the front tire of a car during a race, or making an open-field tackle, Bush maintains an even-keeled demeanor —a product of years of practice and experience for those moments.
“I think that just comes from experience, just being confident in who you are and putting the work in,” he said. “I had a coach that told me, be humble in your preparations and be confident in your ability. So I just try to prepare. When it comes to that moment, I’m not too high, I’m not too low. I’m just the same guy.”
There are more similarities between football and working on a pit crew than many people would think. Bush’s athletic background helped him to rise through the ranks since his start at Richard Childress Racing, where he was a tire changer for Austin Dillon.
Dillon played a part in convincing Bush to join racing after he retired from the NFL following the 2015 season. It took some time, but after developing a relationship with the driver, Bush joined the Childress team in 2021. He joined Trackhouse in 2022, and became a front tire changer for Daniel Suarez.
Suarez’s team has reaped the benefits of preparation and practice so far this year, recently placing second at the NASCAR Cup Series race in Atlanta.
Bush wasn’t an ace in pit lane right away. Most kids grow up wanting to be NASCAR drivers, not tire changers, so getting used to the movements and timing was an adjustment. He was determined to improve. He stayed late and watched film, adjusting the little movements he could in order to make their pit stop time that much better.
It’s more than just a job to Bush — it’s a chance at starting fresh.
“Teams, that’s where I found the best friends in my life,” he said. “Playing on different teams, being a part of an organization. It just gives you some sort of purpose.”
Of the five members of Bush’s pit crew team, four played some level of college or professional football, and one played college basketball. Shaun Peet, a former jackman and one of the Trackhouse pit crew coaches, was a minor league hockey player.
“Getting up to play the game isn’t hard. Getting up when there’s no game left to play, that’s what’s hard,” Peet said. “I got to be part of something else, and it gave me purpose and gave me a reason to get up every morning and work hard and lift weights and do all the things that had brought me a certain level of success to that point in my life.”
Because working on a pit crew is uncharted territory for most people, it often takes someone with experience to take a little more time to help someone new. Having other athletes on his team, the necessary communication came easy to Bush and his teammates.
Jeremy Kimbrough is Bush’s tire carrier. He must place the tire perfectly so Bush can tighten it into place in as little time as possible. Their jobs depend on each other. Kimbrough is also an ex-NFL and Appalachian State player who played for the Washington Commanders in 2013 and 2014.
In practice one day, the two were having a trouble with their spacing next to the car.
“Play the sticks,” Kimbrough said, a phrase used in football to warn players to watch their spacing in relation to the first-down markers.
He related this to racing, and it helped both of them adjust their positions to give themselves more space between the car and the wall.
“I like to say that athletes know how to get along with other athletes,” pit crew fueler and former Rutgers football player Milan Rudanovic said. “You understand, this guy is gonna work for me. I’m gonna work for him.”
Bush added: “We can say the hard things to each other and not feel some type of way because that’s kind of how we’ve been brought up. But you don’t have to be a college athlete to do this if you show that you can work hard and be consistent.”
NASCAR’s season is far longer than the NFL’s. Rather than a 17-game season with potentially four playoff games, the NASCAR Cup Series season lasts 38 weeks.
It might be less physically demanding than a tackle football game, but race season can take a serious toll on one’s mental health, especially if they’re coming from a sport where winning is the standard because there are only so many opportunities for victory.
“I’ve kind of had to put my mind in a different place with that whole thing because it’s like, coming from football you’re trying to win every game and you expect to win every week,” Bush said. “Now it’s like almost giving yourself a chance to win is a win. You want to be in the top, running in the top, doing great pit stops. For the most part that’s a good day.”
There are 36 cars that race regularly in the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series, and only one can win each week. An expectation of victory is not realistic. The length of the season takes a toll as well, keeping drivers, staffers, coaches and crew members away from their families for a significant portion of the year.
It’s a sacrifice Bush and many others were willing to make in order to find their ways back into athletics.
“In this sport, you cannot win alone. So what you see is, guys and girls picking each other up, trying to get them to the finish line so that we succeed together,” Peet said. “And I find that increasingly rare outside of this race shop.”
It appears that Bush is one of those teammates people want to be around when they need some picking up. He leads by example, showing his teammates what it takes to manage a level-headed mindset in the pit lane while chaos ensues everywhere else around him.
A winner by trade, Bush exemplifies what a Super Bowl champion safety does to ensure his team has the best chance to win each week on the track.
“We talk all the time about how success doesn’t reward the wrong person. Josh is a perfect example of that,” Peet said. “I think a lot of the things that made him successful in the NFL (carry over). He’s taken that skill set and applied it to this and, you know, it’s no surprise he’s been successful.
“He’s selfless just in the way he treats his teammates, so he’s been a huge addition for us.”
This story was originally published July 14, 2023 at 6:30 AM.
