NASCAR’s Access Can Turn To Excess For Some Fans
Guest Column By Cathy Elliott
There was a popular Academy Award-nominated movie a few years ago called “The Truman Show.” Starring Jim Carrey, the film posed the question: What would it be like if your entire life was on display for all the world to see, all the time?
If you really want to know the answer, forget Hollywood and its make-believe scenarios. We don’t need the talents of CSI investigators to ferret out that particular secret. Just ask the drivers of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, where Truman’s storyline is played out for real on a weekly basis.
Sometimes it seems that regardless of the size of the fish – and some of these guys are gargantuan – the parameters of the fishbowl never change.
We all have our fractious moments at work, every day. They can range from something as small as a co-worker backing his car into “your” parking spot, to something as momentous as antagonizing a customer, inadvertently or otherwise, and having to schedule a staff meeting to hammer things out behind closed doors.
During NASCAR races, though, there are no closed doors. Those hammers, instead of being used to smooth bumps or correct dents, fly around freely, knocking a few heads as they go along their not-so-merry way.
Radio communications are not confidential. There are no FCC regulations to protect them. Nothing is off the record. It is freedom of speech combined with unrestricted listening. It is legally sanctioned eavesdropping.
The only interaction between a driver and his crew chief while the race car is on the track is via radio chatter. Its purpose, ostensibly, is to allow the driver to explain to the crew chief how the car is handling so that when a pit stop rolls around, the team is ready to correct any problems as quickly as possible, preferably in 13 seconds or less.
The process is similar to a chef adjusting the sugar or salt in a recipe according to input from an official taster, until all the ingredients are balanced just right. Which method of communication would be more effective, do you think?
– Hopping around on one foot and gasping for air while yelling, “What are you trying to do, incinerate me”?
Or…
– Saying as calmly as possible around the flames shooting from every orifice on your head, “Man, all I’m getting here is a lot of heat. You might need to adjust the habanera down to somewhere around lava level.”
In a couple of recent races, we have seen, and most definitely heard, plenty of disgruntled drivers. The way NASCAR competitors choose to express their frustrations, and their individual methods of working to address and alleviate those concerns, is where things can sometimes get contentious.
Probably the most notable example occurred during the first of the 10 races in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, in New Hampshire. Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most beloved and revered driver in the sport, threw what basically amounted to what, in the South, we would refer to as a “hissy fit” on the radio. “Hissy fit” in this case would be defined as throwing a few words of the four-letter variety at his crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., in a markedly raised voice. It got so bad that team owner Rick Hendrick felt he had to step in and attempt to settle things down.
Earnhardt, you see, was not satisfied with the performance of his car. He got that point across, loudly.
What was a little less clear was the exact nature of his complaint with the car. It was kind of hard to figure out what he thought the problem was with all that hollering going on.
(We will now pause for a brief intermission to allow all the Earnhardt fans time to throw a few words of the four-letter variety at me, in markedly raised voices.)
Now, the reason we know all the gory details of this official Hendrick Motorsports race business, which in any other venue would have been conducted behind closed headsets, is because we heard each and every word of it on our scanners, or on Earnhardt’s driver channel on satellite radio, or replayed ad nauseum on various TV broadcasts.
NASCAR’s attitude of extreme accessibility affords us information we would never get in any other sport. The coach can’t cover his face with a clipboard during a Sprint Cup Series race. A meeting between the CEO and the star employee cannot be held in secret. It is on display for the entire world to see … and to hear, and often, to criticize.
There have been all sorts of comments and opinions regarding this incident. “Eury should give Junior better cars.” “Junior shouldn’t lose his temper during the race.” “Mr. Hendrick should let his driver and crew chief work it out between themselves.”
But I’m wondering if any us are actually entitled to an opinion on this particular issue. What we may need to understand is that the interactions on which we are judging the drivers, owners and crew chiefs were never meant for us to be privy to in the first place. It’s like stealing clothes from someone else’s closet, and then complaining about the fit.
If it is true that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar, then it logically follows that the same rule would apply to drivers and their crew chiefs. If each learns how to give the other what he needs, together they might catch a couple 10ths of a second on the race track. For the 12 drivers competing in this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, that fraction of time can represent a huge divide – the distance between Victory Lane and a very disappointing day.
For the rest of us mere mortals, if we’re going to be allowed to listen to the conversations of our heroes, we may want to consider just appreciating the audio access we’ve been given, and keeping our opinions about what we hear to ourselves. That’s the problem with gift horses. Look too closely inside their mouths, and they just might snap at you.
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