NASCAR telecast takes versatility, teamwork

LOUDON, N.H. -- They're sitting off behind Turn 4 in a makeshift village filled with trucks, satellite dishes and tents as far as the eye can see. Several small groups are huddled in a large, blue tent enjoying danish, juice, V8 and loads of coffee.

	Sam Flood

Energy food. Fuel, if you will.

Still others are milling about busily, filled with the nervous energy that comes when a big event is about to happen. The whole scene loosely resembles the infield of any Winston Cup event. The big difference is that this group has enough electricity to power all of New Hampshire and enough influence to change the face of NASCAR.

It's raceday at New Hampshire International Speedway -- and the TNT/NBC production crew is running wide open.

Mother Nature, and not producer Sam Flood, has made the first important decision on this overcast Sunday morning.

"We're in the hurry up," Flood says, meaning the start of the day's race has been pushed up due to the threat of rain. "It sucks."

FROM THE PITS  “He (Jeff Gordon) just made a mistake. I guess he didn’t know that I was pitting in front of the 48. He made a mental error. NASCAR could fix this problem easily by not allowing … is it fair for me to pit? I think so … my pit is right there. What he was doing inside of me and going in ahead of me is hard to figure out. He just messed up mentally and got himself in a bad spot.  •  Michael Waltrip with TNT’s Marty Snider on the pit road accident involving the himself, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson’s pit crew.

As a result of the schedule change, the pre-race show will have to be cut down. The first thing to go is a somewhat newsy, somewhat comical look at what goes on in "the big red truck," NASCAR's version of the principal's office. The feature was decided upon after the previous Saturday's post-race altercation between Kevin Harvick and Ricky Rudd at Richmond International Raceway.

The piece took effort -- the crew had to get clearance from NASCAR to be in the "truck," and some footage from the television show "Law and Order" had to be procured to add a bit of lightheartedness to the piece -- to say nothing of the interviews needed or the editing and production time required

Dave Burns, one of the show's pit reporters and the man responsible for anchoring the piece, isn't thrilled when he hears the news from Flood.

"Son of a ... it's ok," he says, seemingly trying to force himself over the issue. In reality, the piece is "timeless," it can be used at any time.

Flood goes through the new rundown with the on-air crew and then it's time to go to work.

"Let's get this plane up in the air," Flood says.

It's two hours before the green flag is scheduled to fall and 90 minutes before the pre-race show is scheduled to hit the airwaves, and rehearsal is about to begin.

	Mike Wells

The control room looks like a sports fan's dream come true. Dozens of television monitors with words like "goat," "Rambo" and "Dawg" underneath them. Each has a specific purpose -- the ones in the upper left corner are for tape machines, the upper middle are for the in-car cameras.

Slightly to the right are four monitors, each showing the work of a cameraman that is assigned to each pit reporter.

In charge of the images in all of those monitors is Mike Wells, who has been directing Winston Cup broadcasts since 1980 for ESPN, ABC and now TNT/NBC. He's been at the helm for boxing, track and field and basketball telecasts, but he says with a gleam that racing is where his true love is.

"I can remember when we used to cover races with five cameras," Wells says. "Now we've got so much more stuff to use that it's just so cool."

"I can't believe that I get to do this job every day," he says with a grin. "It's just so much fun."

ALSO  The mood over the early moments of the Saturday morning production meeting is more like a bunch of friends giving each other a hard time at a pick-up basketball game rather than a television network crew preparing for a national broadcast.  •  Complete story, click here

To the right of the monitors is the thing the entire 125-person crew is a slave to -- the clock.

Flood says that keeping the show on time is one of the hardest parts of the job.

"There are so many live elements, it makes it very difficult," says Flood. "If you have a certain amount of time slotted for an interview with a driver and that driver decides he has a lot more to say, you have to make that time up somewhere."

Hence, the need for a rehearsal.

In this case, the rehearsal is relatively quick -- a cut to an intro or two here and an addition to this or that is all that's really changed -- but there's a lot of talk. If this happens, then we do this kind of stuff. Let's get this done a little quicker -- blah, blah, blah.

At one point, there are four or five conversations going on at once. Still, everyone knows what everyone else is trying to say.

The quick rehearsal gives the crew a little more time than normal between the first practice run and the final run through, which will happen about 20 minutes before air time.

More busy milling -- more nervous energy.

	Credit: Turner Sports Interactive

At about 12:10, the final rehearsal begins -- this time it's a very quick run-through -- only a segment or two is done again.

Not long after that, it's showtime.

Almost immediately, there's a glitch. One of the cameras following the pit reporters isn't working. Quickly, another camera following another pit reporter gets the message. The viewers are none the wiser.

There aren't any caution flags through the first 50 laps of the race. Suddenly, Flood suggests a "Through The Field." Pit producer James "Shifty" Shiftan tells his men the request and the current running order.

"Through The Field" refers to the segment where the pit reporters give a little tidbit of information about each of the lead-lap drivers in the field. Wells says he's continually amazed how well the information is gathered.

"You've got 43 cars on the track," he says. "The goal is to cover everything. You want to try to cover it all -- and we thought Through the Field would be the best way to do it.

"These guys (the pit reporters) have to gather all this information very quickly. They're always moving, trying to get that information and trying to see everything else.

"How do they get all that?"

This "Through The Field" will be tough -- most of the cars are still on the lead lap, plus there's the added pressure of having to get a sweepstakes announcement in right after Lap 50, which is just a couple of laps away.

	James "Shifty" Shiftan

Flood decides to do just the top 10 drivers for now. Almost instantly, play-by-play man Allen Bestwick throws to his reporters and they're off and running. Wells begins shouting commands to his cameramen -- sounding a lot like an NFL quarterback in the huddle.

"Dissolve 22. Give me 24. Take 24. Give me 22. Take 22," Wells says, arms waving like a conductor trying to get the most out of the Boston Pops.

Just as the 10th-place driver gets his mention, leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. crosses the line after Lap 50.

As Bestwick reads the sweepstakes plug, Flood tells "Shifty" he wants to do 11-20th place. The order is given and they're under way all in the span of about five seconds.

After 20th-place is done, Flood asks for 21-30, but Shiftan says one of his reporters isn't ready to go that deep in the field -- and a commercial is played instead.

That frenetic pace is repeated a couple of more times in the broadcast -- once when Jeff Gordon gets together with Michael Waltrip on pit road, and again when Dale Jarrett finds himself in the middle of the racetrack as a swarm of cars are racing back to the caution just feet from his No. 88 Ford.

Each time, every piece of the coverage people have come to expect fell into place.

You'd think that at the end of the day -- there would be a tremendous amount of relief amongst those in the truck, but Wells says that's not the case.

"It's not really that," he said. "You just say, 'well, this one's done' and you might do a little postmortem and look at tapes and things to see what you could do better or what you would change. But it's definitely not relief.

"We're all having too much fun doing this."