For the better part of the last decade, between high school and college, Sherman Timbs lived and breathed football.
When the Indianola native was getting ready to close out his final season at Mississippi State in 2022, there was little that was set in stone for his future.
Little did he know that just a few months after his second graduation, this time with a master’s in business, he would become involved with a completely different sport.
Timbs is now working in the pit crew for Charlotte, N.C.-based Stewart Haas Racing, doing pit work for multiple NASCAR drivers.
Timbs is the son of Phyllis and Tim Timbs of Indianola.
It all started, Timbs said, when his strength and conditioning coach at Mississippi State, Tyson Brown, introduced him to Greg Honeychuck, director at Stewart-Haas Racing.
Brown and Honeychuck had actually done some coaching together years ago, and Honeychuck made the trip to watch the Mississippi State Bulldogs take on Georgia in 2022.
“He was hanging around coach Brown, and I started talking to him, and he told me what he did,” Timbs said.
Honeychuck told him that he worked for a NASCAR pit crew.
“I said, ‘That’s pretty cool,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you ought to come try it out,’” Timbs said.
Timbs said at the time he was making small talk.
“I never thought that I would,” he admitted.
But when he finished out the season, he started getting calls from the company who suggested that he go to North Carolina for a tryout.
After several calls, Timbs agreed to make the trip.
Timbs, who was still in football shape, went through a rigorous tryout, doing pushups, pullups, and other fitness tests.
“We did practice for two days while we were here. They had us doing pitstops the whole time we were here,” he said.
There was one issue that crossed Timbs’ mind more than once. Having dedicated much of his life to football over the past decade, he knew little about NASCAR.
“We were down here on the tryout, and they asked, ‘Do you know anything about NASCAR?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know anything about NASCAR.’ They were like, ‘That’s fine. You don’t need to, you just need to know how to pit a car,” Timbs said.
Timbs received a job offer before he left the facility in Charlotte.
Even still, with his new degree and an undetermined career path, Timbs was fielding some offers back in his home state at various institutions. He put off the decision for a while.
Finally, in August, Timbs called Stewart-Haas and accepted the job.
“I told them I’d be there the next week, and I took off,” he said.
Timbs said that his weeks now start with four days of workouts, a lot of those consisting of cardio reps. There’s a lot of pit practice throughout the week as well.
He typically gets Fridays and Saturdays off from the gym, and the crew flies out on Sunday mornings to the races.
He has been all over the United States during his brief time in the crew, including Bristol, Talladega, Phoenix, Daytona and Texas.
He said the crew typically does about eight to ten pitstops a race, and they have to be ready for each one.
“We’ll do four or five pitstops a practice, and we’ll be gassed when we get done,” he said.
Timbs said that the crew wears safety equipment to protect their ears, so he doesn’t get to hear all of the crowd noise or track sounds while he is down there, but he gets to see just about everything that happens.
“Crazy stuff happens every week on pit row,” he said. “They don’t always show it, people getting hit by cars, losing tires, tires running over people, sparks that catch the gas tank on fire. Sometimes people will leave the gas pump in the car, and it takes off.”
Now that he is right there where the action is, Timbs said he has started to follow the sport more.
“I’m still trying to catch up,” he said. “It’s like if you never watched NFL or college football in your life and you jump in and try to learn every single player and every coach and everything about it. It’s a lot to learn.”
Timbs has been able to learn about the sport and about being in a pit crew, and he credits himself being prepared for the NASCAR life from the lessons he learned as a Bulldog under Coaches Dan Mullen, Joe Moorhead and Mike Leach.
“I could have chosen any career path, and I probably would have been ready for it,” Timbs said. “The things that you’re taught, the discipline and everything in the day-to-day life of being a college athlete. You have to learn how to manage your time, take care of yourself, communicate with people and work hard under pressure.”
As for his parents, who watched him play in a lot of high school and college football games over the last ten years, Timbs said they are making the switch over to NASCAR too.
“(My mom’s) good with it now,” Timbs said about his leaving for life on the road and on the track. “She’s got a new sport to watch, her and my dad. They’re very supportive.”
