Radios rule the road in NASCAR

John Kekis

Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999 | 8:45 a.m.

Ray Evernham would be lost without one. So would Kyle Petty and Bill Stinson.

In the age of television, radio's often the place to be in NASCAR.

Evernham, crew chief for Jeff Gordon, has to know what changes his driver wants to make on the next pit stop. Petty, wheeling his 3,400-pound car around the track, is on the other end of such communications with his team.

Listening in on it all are many fans in the stands, such as Stinson. In an experience not found in any other sport, they can eavesdrop on the sometimes exciting exchanges between drivers and pit crews on rented scanners and headsets for about $40.

Imagine miking a manager's visit to the mound in baseball, or hearing a coach chew out a quarterback on the sideline after a botched play.

In auto racing, fans can feel as if they're in the driver's seat.

As Gordon reclaimed the top spot on lap 71 at the Frontier at the Glen race last Sunday, he assumed a comfortable lead over Rusty Wallace, Ron Fellows, Jerry Nadeau and Dale Jarrett.

"Take it easy," Evernham told Gordon on the radio. "Don't waste your tires on those guys. No pressure. When you come around there'll be 20 to go. Pretty much you and Rusty are the race."

When a caution came out seconds later, Gordon wondered what to do.

"Stay out! Stay out!" Evernham said. "We're done, Bud. It's time to take care of your tires. Keep it on the track."

Gordon did, and went on to win his record fifth straight road-course race.

All the major circuits and their fans now use radios, including the Indy Racing League.

The Indianapolis 500 featured one of the most dramatic exchanges over the radio, between Robbie Gordon and his crew at the end of the race. A nervous Gordon, leading the final laps, kept asking his pit about his dwindling fuel as listeners held their breath.

"The fuel's OK. Keep racing," car owner John Menard told his driver over the radio.

Gordon, however, ran out of fuel with just over a lap remaining and Kenny Brack won the race.

In NASCAR, officials, 24 Winston Cup teams and thousands of spectators get their radios from Pat Frossard, whose Racing Radios trailer is among the busiest in the garage area.

Radios came to the track more than two decades ago.

"NASCAR officials invited us to help with communication between the tower and the guys on the ground," said Frossard, a retired Marine known around the track as Major. "In those days, teams tried different types of radios, CBs and what have you."

None of them worked very well.

"So, we came up with stuff that was off the shelf and parts that our folks built," he said. "Our stuff worked, and it just took off from there."

One of the company's first customers was seven-time champion Richard Petty. That alone was enough to make Racing Radios the mainstream of communications at the track.

The two-channel contraption Petty used in the 1970s has evolved into a compact belt unit about the size of a small phone, with 128-channel capability.

"Half the field had radios in 1979, and then all of a sudden everybody had them," said Petty's son, Kyle, a 20-year Winston Cup veteran. "It used to be that only three or four people had radios - the driver, the crew chief, and maybe one other guy.

"Now you see 20 lying around."

It's Frossard's job to keep them humming. He drives more than 60,000 miles a year, arrives each week before the race teams and chooses frequencies that don't interfere with local communications.

Frossard and the competition - New Jersey-based Racing Electronics and Race Scan of Tennessee - use the business band of the UHF radio spectrum because it's quiet inside cars that produce all kinds of noise.

There are 12 channels to choose from, and each team has primary and backup frequencies assigned by the FCC.

In the early years of Richard Petty's record-setting career, hand signals and pit blackboards were used almost exclusively to communicate with his crew. Some pitboards and hand signals are still used, but radios rule the road today.

"I've never done it without them, so it would be really hard for me," Evernham said. "It probably took a lot more common sense with drivers and crew chiefs when you were using a blackboard and hand signals."

The radios rarely break down, but Evernham says it's almost a "panic" situation when they do.

"The sport's evolved so much that right now I don't know that anybody could be competitive without it," he explained.

What started as a tool for race teams has become something that's fun for fans and big business for the radio guys. Frossard estimates that about half the crowd at any Winston Cup race is listening, most on the rented scanners.

Stinson and his wife, Gayle, are among those who consider radios standard equipment. Even when she isn't listening, her headset is used to drown out the deafening noise of the cars.

"I enjoy listening to the pit strategies of the drivers," said Bill Stinson, from Troy, N.H. "Usually, you know something's happened before it's announced and you can look for it."

Frossard says that's why fans are drawn to radios.

"It truly puts the race into a whole different perspective," he said. "There's something to be said for that."

But there's also something to be said for taking off the headsets.

"After a long day, your ears hurt," Evernham said.

Still, it's hard to get used to being without his radio after he leaves the track.

"You catch yourself sometimes in a conversation with somebody saying '10-4,' " Evernham said.