Customer Reviews

Real Men Work in the Pits: A Life in NASCAR Racing

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Some people really know how to market themselves. During the last few years, Jeff Hammond has went from being a succesful NASCAR crew chief to TV anlayst, pitchman, professional wrestler, rodeo competitor and now book author. This man has quite an agent!

As for the new book, there's not a lot of new ground. Although Hammond claims that he is willing to speak out and criticize NASCAR when necessary, there is very little commentary in the book about anything.

Along the way he provides a number of interesting stories regarding his relationships and experiences with people such as Junior Johnson and Darrell Waltrip but it is merely a recounting of his career with little detail and insight. What I found somewhat surprising is that Hammond spent his last year as a crew chief working with Kurt Busch and for Jack Roush. That was Busch's rookie season and he is now Nextel Cup Champ, but you won't get to learn a single thing about what the new champ is like from reading this book and very little about car owner Roush who has now won two championships in a row.

It's written well and an easy read but not a great literary work. The good news is that Hammond is likable, the stories are interesting and it's probably worth the three hours or so that it will take to read this book. That being said, Waltrip's recent book is much more detailed and more worthy of your attention. The even better news is that Hammond will remain on Fox covering NASCAR where he is one of the best in broadcast analysis of the sport.

I started reading this book when I went to bed and couldn't put it down until it was finished. Jeff writes about his father racing dirt tracks and how he worked with his uncle on his dad's race car at the age of 12. From those days, he and his brother went on to build cars on their own and get drivers to drive for them. This led to Jeff putting aside his dream for playing college football and become involved with Junior Johnson's team working his way up the ranks to Crew Chief.
I found it interesting to read about the relationship Junior had with his workers and the respect that was held for him.
There are many neat personal stories about Cal Yarbrough, Junior Johnson and many pages about the relationship Darrell Waltrip had with Jeff before and after becoming his crew chief.
The underlying thread in this book from my perspective was the loyalty Jeff had for his family, Junior, teammates and friends. I really enjoyed the book and hope someday to meet Jeff in person.

If there is any sport that is team oriented but where the team gets almost no recognition it's NASCAR racing. The driver gets all the glory, the kisses of the pretty girls, the photographs holding the trophy.

This book is a story of almost thirty years of being in the crew, a lot of years as the jack man. I've always thoought that the jack man had just about the hardest job of them all -- those jacks are heavy, they've got to be positioned right, and they've got to be moved fast. I guess that's a good place to start, because from there he went on to become one of the more successful crew chiefs in the business.

The book is one that will delight NASCAR fans. It's the inside story of what goes on behind the scenes, it's what you have to do to win races, it's the people who were there during the time when NASCAR was moving from the small unknown side aspect of racing to the big time national sport that it is today.

It is the stories of the people that make this such an enjoyable book.

The title of this book suggests that it will be stories of the unique people who work on NASCAR pit crews and some of the wild things that have happened to them over their careers. Instead it is the usual racing book, focused on drivers and chasing points over many seasons. It contains no insights about what it's like to work in the pits or what's special about the people who do.

Dedicated NASCAR fans might find some new dirt about the conflicts among the people the author worked with over his career but casual fans who believed the title will be disappointed.

quite simply unputdownable - started reading in the afternoon and spent all night reading.
loved it

Real Men Work In The Pits by Jeff Hammond could have been a lot better.

The 2005 effort by Fox Sports personality and longtime NASCAR crew chief Jeff Hammond has no ghostwriter listed which means Hammond made all the name misspellings himself. From Felix "Sabatas" Sabates to Jim "Tommy VanDiver" Vandiver, Hammond cannot seem to get it right.

Getting past that, my other big complaint would be that 2/3 of this book deals with 1976-1986. True, those were his big years with Junior Johnson but the way he skimmed over 1993-2000 was humorous. Obviously, he had little success but the book is more an autobiography of Junior Johnson and Darrell Waltrip than it is Hammond's life in NASCAR racing.

One interesting thing that could have been added onto more was in 1996 when he hooked back up with DW for the final part of the season, only to be fired after the team's Christmas party.

I enjoyed the honesty, though, including the strained relationship with Dale Earnhardt that Hammond touched on after The Intimidator wrecked Waltrip at Richmond in 1986.

Hammond offered an inside look at the Junior Johnson operation and it now has me wanting to read about ol' JJ.

In reality, the book was something of an anti-love letter to Darrell Waltrip. The banter they share on Fox leads you to believe they had nothing but fun together but according to Hammond in the book, DW was a money-hungry egomaniac. Here I thought he was just an egomaniac!

Still, for a crew chief autobiography this was pretty interesting. It needed a better editor.

Jeff Hammond has written a fantastic book. He's captured the racing action, development of the sport and most importantly some of the people that have made the sport what it is.

`Real men work in the pits' is written in an easy reading, conversational manner that never seems forced, making it a hard book to put down once you've started reading.

NASCAR very rarely screens on TV in Australia, and when it does it's often a five minute highlights package so you never get to see a whole race. But even for someone with low exposure to the sport it's still a great book to read.

If you're a fan of any sort of motor sport, then you'll enjoy this book for the spirit of competition. Even if you're not into racing, this book would still make an enjoyable read for the colourful way in which the likes of Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, and Junior Johnson are described and one man's career in racing is told. Well worth adding to your bookshelf.