First Person: What It’s Like To Spot At A Road Course

A couple years ago when I worked at a weekly NASCAR magazine, I had an idea: What if I could do a first-person account of what it’s like to be a spotter?

I pitched it to my boss, but he immediately shook his head no.

“What if you got someone killed?” he said. “Think of the liability issues.”

He raised a good point, so I quickly dropped the subject.

But as I was pulling into Watkins Glen International on Saturday morning, the idea popped back into my head.

While spotting on an oval with no previous experience would be a bit crazy, perhaps a road course would offer a good chance to give spotting a try.

After all, many teams use three spotters at Watkins Glen, because there’s no place at the 2.45-mile course where the entire track is visible.

Some teams get by with just two spotters, even though that leaves some blind spots. What if there was a team that was willing to give me a shot as Spotter No. 3?

I asked around, thinking my chances were fairly slim of landing a spotting gig with zero notice. But to my surprise, I received a couple offers.

It came down to a choice between spotting for Rookie of the Year contender Brian Scott (Braun Racing) and road-course ace Boris Said (RAB Racing).

With apologies to Scott, a chance to help spot for Said at Watkins Glen – a place where he has excelled for years and the home of his “Said Head” fans – sounded too good to pass up.

So I walked over to the RAB Racing hauler, where team owner Robby Benton invited me inside and showed me a map of the track.

Benton planned to serve as the primary spotter, pointing to the spot atop the main grandstands where he would call the race. Another spotter, the team’s truck driver, would position himself so that he could see the so-called “bus stop” chicane and the track’s “inner loop.”

But RAB had no one scheduled to watch for a blocked track at the entrance to Turn 2 and the uphill esses. Drivers can get through that area using their mirrors if necessary, but Benton decided he’d give me a shot.

The owner gave me a headset and team radio and walked me through how to use it correctly (hold down the “talk” button for an extra second before speaking in order to let the driver hear all your words).

He also offered a couple general spotting tips, such as saying “left” and “right” to describe the position of other cars at a road course as opposed to “inside” and “outside.”

And with that, he sent me out to take my position.

I hoped my crash course in spotting wouldn’t end with Said crashing on the course. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case.

A wooden spotter’s stand at the top of the esses provided a beautiful view of the track and of Seneca Lake off in the distance, and I climbed up the platform to find about a dozen people already standing along the railing.

It was immediately evident that these spotters had already staked out their various positions and I would have to deal with the leftovers.

Fortunately, I found a place beside longtime Greg Biffle spotter Joel Edmonds, who was helping spot for Roush Fenway Racing’s Colin Braun on Saturday.

I asked Edmonds for advice, and he told me that as long as I helped Said when cars were around him and gave information if the track was blocked, I’d be fine.

OK, I thought. No problem. I can do this.

Looking out over the track, though, I began to feel nervous. Really nervous. My hands felt like they were about to start shaking.

What if I somehow ruined Said’s day by saying the wrong thing? Or what if I told him something that would cause him to ruin someone else’s day? What if I had an impact on the race?

Suddenly, my moments of worry were interrupted by Benton’s voice sounding in my headset, asking for a radio check.

“Have fun,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’ve spent enough time listening to other teams. You know what to do.”

“I think I do,” I replied. “But I’m still pretty nervous.”

“10-4,” he said. “I’d be worried about you if you weren’t.”

I noticed the other spotters were removing their headsets, so I followed suit and realized the national anthem was beginning to play.

In that quiet stillness pierced only by the faraway sounds of a singer’s voice over the public address system, the butterflies went away for a moment.

But they were replaced by a surge of adrenaline. I felt like a football player about to run out of the tunnel before kickoff.

Even as a fill-in spotter, there was a tremendous feeling of competition and wanting to succeed. I never realized until that moment just how much the regular spotters must feel like they’re part of the team.

Though spotters don’t physically drive the car, they do so with their minds and words. It’s much more intense than just standing there watching the cars go around and saying, “Clear.”

The anthem ended, and somewhere across the track on the pit road I couldn’t see, Said climbed in the car and keyed the radio.

“Hello hello?” he said quickly and cheerfully.

Benton responded and began the pre-race formalities, which included telling Said where his three spotters would be. I was introduced as “a guy up on the deck approaching Turn 4.”

Said seemed to process this information but quickly changed the subject, noting “Steve Wallace’s pit box is like a damn hotel!”

As the pace car took the field around for the parade laps, Said came on the radio and noted in a more serious tone that the restarts would be a “big deal.”

Then he said something that made the butterflies in my stomach flutter even more than before.

“Can you guys clear me on the starts so I can get single-file heading into (Turn) 2?” he asked.

Uh...wait a second here. I hadn’t planned to be in a position to “clear” him. But Turn 2 was my responsibility, and he needed that information.

“Yep,” I said, trying to sound confident. “10-4.”

The race began without incident, and the first 20 laps were caution-free. Said’s black No. 09 would come into view for awhile, drive past me and then disappear, becoming the responsibility of the other spotters.

I would occasionally press the “Talk” button and tell Said how far back the next car was (“You’ve got the 99 two car lengths back”) but I tried to say as little as possible. I figured he didn’t need an inexperienced spotter giving him too much unnecessary information.

When NASCAR called a debris caution at Lap 21, I felt a wave of relief wash over me.

Phew. I was finally able to take a deep breath.

“How’s it going?” Edmonds said from the perch next to me.

“Nerve-wracking!” I said.

Edmonds laughed.

“You need to do Bristol,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

I’ll leave that to the professionals.

Said had started the race in 13th place but fell to 17th, and I noticed that I was taking each pass personally and practically glaring at the cars who dared to drive by.

Michael McDowell passed him? Come on...get it back!

I also realized I had absolutely no idea who was winning the race.

Had there been a pass for the lead? What was going on up front?

I honestly didn’t know. I was solely focused on Said’s car. It was an unusual sensation for someone who typically watches the leaders and doesn’t pay that much attention to the rest of the field.

Benton came over the radio and told Said the race was about to restart, so I locked my eyes on the exit of Turn 1.

Through my headset, I heard the cars as they roared back to life and saw them scream into view.

And then, suddenly, it happened.

Faster than I could even blink or process what exactly I was seeing, the cars in front of Said began to crash and spin.

In my mind, it was like this: Smoke. Car spinning. Crashing. Track blocked.

I couldn’t determine exactly where Said was, but knew he was in the pack that was just behind the wrecking car.

As fast as I could get my brain to tell my hand to key the radio, I opened my mouth and tried to find the words for what I was seeing.

“Spinning in front, track blocked, can’t see...” I said.

By the time the last word came out of my mouth, it was already over: Said had been collected in the mess, and RAB’s day was ruined.

My immediate reaction was fear.

Uh oh. Was that my fault? Should I have said something else?

NASCAR displayed the red flag, and Said drove his damaged car away from the wreckage. I turned my eyes to the replay screen for the verdict.

As it turned out, Jason Leffler had gone off the track, bounced off a guardrail and come back across into another car, starting a 10-car melee that completely blocked the entrance to Turn 2.

There was no way Said could have gotten through it, other than completely stopping on the track. But looking back, he wouldn’t have had time to stop even if I’d told him.

Still, my mind was filled with other things I could have said:

• Go low! Go low! No, that was something spotters said at high-speed oval tracks.

• Back it down, back it down! That probably would have been better than “Spinning in front, track is blocked.” Would it have helped?

• STOP, Boris, STOP! Maybe that would have worked. But what if he got run over from behind for following my instructions?

There was a lot more to this whole spotting thing than I thought.

Edmonds, whose car was also caught up in the wreck, assured me there was nothing I could have said differently.

“That’s all you can do,” he said. “The track is just so narrow right there.”

With a damaged car, the rest of the afternoon wasn’t as much fun. Said got passed again and again, and my only job became to tell him when a car was closing in.

“You’ve got a car seven back,” I would say. “He’s looking right. Car to the right.”

The team eventually worked its way up into position for the free pass, but a caution never came out and Said finished 22nd.

On the radio, he thanked the team for the opportunity and apologized for getting caught up in the wreck, but added, “I don’t know what I could have done differently.”

Me neither. But on the long walk back inside the track to the garage, I kept replaying the incident in my head.

What else could I have said? Could I have somehow anticipated the wreck sooner and told him to be careful?

I returned my team radio to the RAB Racing hauler and found Benton.

As I opened my mouth and began to offer an explanation, Benton cut me off.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” he said. “I saw it happening in front of him. No matter what we could have said, the driver’s mind is already made up at that point. He sees it and his decision is made. Don’t beat yourself up.”

I noted that Benton kept a remarkably calm tone throughout all the adversity and asked if he really felt that way.

“Inside, I’m mad enough to fight,” he said. “The cards were really stacked in our favor.”

It had been a rare opportunity for a struggling Nationwide Series independent to have an easy top-10 finish – or a top-five, if everything went right. But it had all vanished in that wreck.

“No amount of planning or preparation can change that,” Benton said. “It happens. It’s a shame. But it could have been a hell of a lot worse.”

As I walked through the garage thinking about the day’s events, I spotted McDowell, the driver who had raced hard with Said early in the event.

“You ran him right into the wreck!” McDowell said teasingly, then flashed a smile. “Nah, there’s nothing you could do there. It was like Ricochet Alley.”

Maybe not. But I know I’ll go to sleep tonight still wondering.