Tight-knit team high above action helps keep races on track with mix of technology, rules


BROOKLYN, Mich. -- As cars slowed on the second lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Michigan International Speedway, controlled chaos exploded in a booth 150 feet above the 2-mile oval.

"Put it out!" screamed vice president of competition Robin Pemberton, gesturing wildly at a five-car pileup in Turn 4 as he asked for a yellow flag. "Get 'em! Get 'em! Get 'em!"

On the row to Pemberton's right, six people excitedly chirped numbers and directives into their headset mics as a bank of laptops spat out sheets of data and a running order. Voices rose amid a flurry of agitation about getting the cars lined up correctly. Other officials fretted about an oncoming storm being tracked on aviation-quality radar equipment.

All of this occurred as the 39-car field below ran at a pedestrian 55 mph — NASCAR's version of a timeout.

But the action never stops in the control tower.

"It's unique to auto racing that the officiating always continues and there is no break," said David Hoots, who has spent a quarter-century as the Sprint Cup race director, whose North Carolina Piedmont accent is the most prevalent on the NASCAR officials' channel. "Unless there's a red flag, there's always something going on. It's the only sport that's like that."

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Yet trying to oversee the inherent pandemonium of a race in which cars can slam into walls, drivers can violate a laundry list of regulations and debris suddenly can turn a racetrack into a minefield — sometimes simultaneously and often at 200 mph — also can be similar to any other sport.

"You're trying to manage what's going on without being involved," Hoots said. "If you never see us do what we're doing, we've done a good job like any officiating crew."

At Michigan, NASCAR allowed USA TODAY Sports a rare peek behind the curtain at its scoring tower, and an understanding emerged of how state-of-the art toys are blended with the gritty sensibility of Saturday short-track races.

The tools used to supervise the rhythm of a race are more technologically advanced than those in any other sport and have evolved greatly from the era of manual scoring in which a team member pushed a button every time its car crossed the finish line to establish the running order.

Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway will mark 20 years since the advent of electronic scoring, and there have been several advances in the interim that have increased the amount of information at officials' fingertips, from scoring loops around the track, 18 angles of high-definition video and several screens of information showing cars' running position, pit windows and lap speeds.

Mason Vincent, NASCAR's senior director of timing and scoring, is helping spearhead the next generation of scoring — a system created independently by NASCAR that could incorporate GPS to determine cars' positions in real time (vs. the current loops that are hundreds of yards apart). Vincent said it could be ready in five years (a time frame that dovetails with NASCAR chairman Brian France's loose plan to equip stock cars with "glass dashboards," i.e. iPad-style technology that is on the horizon for street cars).

"As soon as we get the technology where the cars can know where they are relative to each other, then we're golden," Vincent said.

It still won't eliminate the need for the experienced pragmatism of Hoots, who grew up 2 miles from legendary Bowman Gray Stadium — NASCAR's longest-running weekly track, in Winston-Salem, N.C. — and throughout races still furiously scribbles car numbers whose hieroglyphics form his own foolproof binary code for a running order.

"All this (technology) is great, but you can't get overly dependent on it," he said. "The way I say it, it makes you dumb. When you quit doing this manually, you're not engaging. It provides a lot more information, but you still need to apply it manually."

PHOTOS: Inside a NASCAR control tower

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Eyes on cars, computers

In the first of two rows in the tower room that is about 20 feet by 5 feet and offers a view above the start-finish line, there are eight people working who essentially handle the race flow. However, it's the race director who has the conch as the voice constantly in contact with pit officials and spotters (who relay messages to drivers and teams).

During the Nationwide race at Michigan, that's Tim Bermann, whose voice resembles the plaintive staccato of an air traffic controller, particularly when moving safety vehicles under yellow. ("Let me have three jet dryers at pit out. ... Now drop one out of Turn 2 for cleanup on the lower line. ... Now bring the vacuum back up the track.")

In the Cup race, this role is filled by Hoots, a former UPS driver who has called more than 800 consecutive races in NASCAR's premier series since 1988 (he's lost track of when the streak began but said it was only in danger once when he had gall bladder removal surgery five days before a Richmond International Raceway event several years ago).

Though Hoots makes the final calls on when a caution flag is displayed, he has help from several high-ranking executives, including Sprint Cup director John Darby and NASCAR President Mike Helton, who usually is the ranking member.

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"John and I have worked together for 15 years, so I know what it means if I get an elbow in my side," Hoots said. "I have a great view but not a perfect field of vision. We're trying to fill in so there are no blind spots."

This Saturday at Michigan, the senior official is Pemberton, who sits beside a 42-inch flat screen with a high-definition feed of 18 camera angles around the track. Each can be maximized on the screen, and all are synched with scoring data via a time stamp. When officials attempt to determine if a car jumps a restart (as Jimmie Johnson did at Dover International Speedway), the replays are operated by Christy May, who also is the tower's liaison to the TV broadcast and can help notify officials when a broadcast raises questions about procedures.

Pemberton's makeshift survival kit for the tower includes a yellow legal pad, a 2013 rulebook, a stopwatch, a scanner, a pair of Sprint Cup-emblazoned binoculars and three packets of Goody's headache powder. But he spends most of the race with his eyes on the TV and the track, shouting instructions and suggestions.

"Look for debris on the back, guys."

"Ask your spotters about rain. You've got rain on the cameras."

"Hey! You need to get with the spotter of the 79 and tell him, 'Pick a (expletive) lane and stay in it.' "

He also offers encouragement to competitors. "Hang on there, kids," Pemberton said softly as cars scrambled four wide off turn 2 on a restart.

Others aren't nearly as demonstrative in doing their jobs, many of which require staying in continuous contact with stations around the track. Official Mike Phillips is charged with dispatch of ambulances and safety vehicles, keeping lanes clear to access a crash scene. Jim Cassidy, NASCAR vice president of racing operations, is a liaison to the care center, and Nationwide director Wayne Auton oversees supervisors on pit road.

Laptops are at workstations of the primary officials, allowing them to toggle among several screens of data. One shows the running order with color-coded notifications: A car's number goes red when in violation (falling below minimum speed, pitting too early, exceeding the speed limit during a stop) and pink when positioned to be awarded a free pass to the lead lap if a yellow appears.

Another screen displays two horizontal rows of numbers, the top listing the virtual running order and the bottom showing the way the cars are running on track. That helps align the field correctly as does official Melissa Rogers, who calls out lead changes, pit stops and when cars have committed penalties or are out of order.

In managing the flow of cautions, Hoots also consults a screen showing how many laps cars have run since their last stop and measuring it against a standard pit window (which is the same for every car, not taking into account engine tuning, setups, etc.)

"You just want to have guidance on how rapidly to get the pits open so you don't run the field out of gas," Hoots said.

The weather also factors into major decisions, turning the tower into a meteorology unit on overcast days such as Saturday. Pemberton and Hoots consulted their RadarLab site often, tracking the progress of a nearby cell and calculating how much time was needed to reach halfway for an official race.

There is time for being a fan, too. Though he often relied on his scanner to monitor teams' chatter about strategy and track conditions, Pemberton also tuned to Kyle Busch's channel for much of the Michigan race as the No. 54 Toyota driver grew ornery picking his way through lapped traffic. "Going to (expletive) punch him in the face," Busch radioed halfway through the race, drawing a laugh from Pemberton.

"He's a beauty," Pemberton said. "If nothing is happening, you tune in to whoever is most entertaining. I won't deny that."

Speed, accuracy vital

In a row above the nerve center for the race, Vincent, chief scorer Kyle McKinney and timing and scoring technician Matt Pattison monitor numerous laptops to ensure cars are hitting the scoring loops and being recorded correctly. Before the addition of the loops in 2004, cars were tracked only at the finish line by transponders (which were added in 1995).

Pattison's job is acquisition — that Michigan's 18 scoring loops, eight on track and 10 in the pits, are transmitting reliably in concert with each cars' two transponders.

McKinney validates that the info being collected matches what actually happens on track, meaning he is taking notes every 10 laps on the running order and which drivers have fallen a lap down.

"I'm just there to make sure they don't miss anything, and 98% of the time I'm just watching until something goofy happens," McKinney said.

It occasionally does, such as the Nationwide race at Phoenix International Raceway in which a crash caused a transponder to be caught in another car's front grille, necessitating a "ghost" image of the car to be deleted repeatedly for nearly 100 laps until the problem was diagnosed.

Things also get tricky in final-lap finishes under caution at 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway, which has a series-high 28 scoring loops. When the caution flies during races, the field is frozen according to the most recent scoring loop — except on the final lap when time-stamped video is used to determine precise positions at the moment of a yellow. McKinney has spent more than 45 minutes after a Talladega race poring over video tape to determine the results.

The scoring system is built on redundancy, from the backup transponders to backup loops to a backup system that still records cars only at the finish line independently of the main network.

Beyond double-checking the numbers, McKinney, Pattison and a rotating group of scorers (the same three are in place at a track during a race weekend, handling all three national series) also are at the disposal of officials on the front row for consultation on rules violations and running order.

"I tell my guys we answer questions," Vincent said. "I don't care if the question is as simple as who the leader is. We just have to be able to answer their questions accurately and swiftly."

Hoots said receiving the information much more quickly has made his job more efficient, and electronic scoring would reach its ultimate goal when he could pinpoint every car exactly.

But even then he'll be employing a pencil to backstop his numbers during Cup races.

"There's still a lot of paper floating around up here," Hoots said.

Follow Ryan on Twitter @nateryan