@nascarcasm: How to communicate when your in-car radio is broken

Radio difficulties can happen during a race, as evidenced by Chase Elliott’s woes during the race this past weekend at Kansas Speedway. When this happens, there are several workarounds teams can use in order to communicate with their driver and vice versa.

Such as this one, for example. Even if his radio was inoperable, Kurt Busch still would have been able to communicate to his team, “I think we’re done for the day.”

This fan’s radio appears to be working fine, so you use him to relay message to the driver when the driver goes down the frontstretch. “Doing the Robocop means stay out, if he’s hitting that Quan, that’s a two-tire stop, and a full twerk is four tires.”

Signs seem to sometimes wind up stuck on cars, especially at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. Seems like it wouldn’t be difficult to use them for communication also.

You probably have a teammate or two on track who is not having any radio issues. Have your team send messages to him, which he can then relay to you. For example, is it time to pit? Cool, put your car in neutral and he will push you directly there.

We’re a little surprised the No. 9 team did not use this method, given how well it utilized hand signals in the past.

While the team is working on the issue, use trial and error to determine your position on track. For instance, pretend the No. 8 car has no radio communication. Here, he’s learning via trial and error, “OK, wasn’t clear that time I guess.”

Prepare yourself for situations where you’re not able to hear your team by practicing non-verbal interactions with others. For example, without being able to hear Joey Logano very well, Chase is able to reach the conclusion Logano is not happy.

NOTE: Requires knowledge of Morse Code and a victory at Bristol Motor Speedway.

But it is crucial the guy with the radio that works gets back out of the car before dropping the jack. Two guys in a race car is against what is known as NASCAR’s “Anti-unauthorized Uber” rule.