Watching NASCAR with Track Pass

It is coming and I can't wait. I am so sick of winter and football, Daytona can't get here quick enough. I wish the Speed Channel would re-run races on the weekend so we could escape the thugs playing football. It would be really neat if they would have a panel of drivers who finished at different places in the race, talk about what happened from their perspective. Maybe they could have members from a single team comment on a race. It would be interesting to see how the racers of a single team interact, the Gibbs and Hendricks teams especially. But since I have to wait, I thought I might write about my favorite way to watch a race.

Different people watch races different ways. My husband sits down in an easy chair and dozes off, confident that if anything happens the voices of the announcers will wake him up and they will re show whatever caused the excitement. I am a bit more focused in watching the races. I enjoy hearing the interplay between the crew chief, driver, spotter and occasionally the owner.

Races are shown by different networks at different times of the year. Each network has its own style and its own team of announcers. Daryl Waltrip is my favorite. I know some people hate the "Boogity, boogity, boogity. Let's go racing boys," but I love it. I don't listen to the announcers too much any way. Still a race without announcers is more confusing and less exciting. With all the staff that they have helping them, they know when everyone pitted and who needs to go in for gas. They can talk about all the potential conflicts on the track and they can even play back scanner chatter during the broadcasts.

I want to mention how very entertaining the commercials shown during the races are. They often make people laugh and some are so memorable that you can talk about them years later and other fans know what you mean. The only problem with commercials is that it seems like there is a wreck or a caution as soon as a commercial is shown. It doesn't bother me so much anymore.

You see when I watch a race, I enjoy putting my computer on a table so that I can see it and see the television too. I plug in the head set and put it over one ear. That way I can hear the scanner as well as the announcers. When I first started with Track Pass, we watched Race View, which enabled us to watch our favorite driver, who was not in a very good car at the time. Since the television mostly covers what is going on at the front of the race, it was the only way to watch him. Since he wasn't driving cup any more, we decided to downgrade our package for the next year.

Now We have Pit Command and I love it. Sometimes the crawl at the top of the television screen with the positions of each car is slow, or isn't near the driver I want to know about. By moving my mouse I can see where any racer is running. Are they down one or two laps? Are they in the garage? Did they just pass or get passed? I can see the overall shape of the race track and what turn different drivers are in. I can tell how close together a group of cars are to another group of cars, or where the pile up is. It doesn't stop during the commercials either. There are little circled dots going around the track that show each car's position on the track. I usually only watch the lead lap cars, since things, can get confusing.

Pit Command includes the Scanner, which allows me to listen to one particular race team, the Nascar Officials or to the radio broadcast. Since I live in the north it is usually the only way I could get the radio. The Scanner is available without Pit Command for about half what Pit Command costs. I like to listen to a team. Since we found that when we were watching a team we really liked, they usually wrecked, we began watching teams that we didn't like a lot.

Thus began my relationship with "Big Earl." The man who has occasionally whispered in my ears as I have drifted off to sleep. What a mellow voice. For most of last season I listened to Jimmie Johnson. Or to be more precise I listened to Chad Knaus and "Big Earl." It isn't that we disliked the team, in fact I think that Chad - referred to by some as Cheatin' Chad - is an absolute genius at figuring out what is going to happen with the track. I have laughed out loud at the comments they have made. I remember being surprised last April at Talladega, when Chad told the spotter not to try to count Jimmie into his pit box, because "he's not that smart, he's just a driver." It has become for us a family saying. There was also the time that "Jimmie told Chad he was going to "kiss him on the mouth" or comments about other drivers. There was the subtle way that I could tell that Chad was unhappy with Jimmie at one point because of something Jimmie had said. Not so much because of anything Chad said, but because of how very quiet the scanner became. It was a brief bump in the relationship, and you could almost hear Chad pull himself up and tend to the business of winning the race.

I would listen to someone else, but when I hear "Big Earl's" voice, it is like listening to a favorite show on the radio. I sure have missed him this winter. I have listened to other teams and have gone back because the voices grate, or because a favorite driver has wrecked as soon as I put him on. I remember that in one of the later races last season, I thought that it would be fun to listen to Mike Skinner who usually drives in the Trucks. While that was interesting, I think I only got to listen to him for about 3 minutes, before the wreck and so back to Jimmie & Chad.

One of the neat things about Pit Command is that you can watch Qualifying. Again there are no commercials so it is over quicker. Again you don't have to wait for the crawl to see where any particular driver is on the grid. You can watch how fast the current qualifier is in relation to the speed of the pole sitter. You can sort out quickly how many drivers won't make the race, because there are only 43 spots.

You might enjoy watching a race this way. There are 14 day trials available for all three levels of TrackPass. Check it out at NASCAR.COM TrackPass. Just because I like to watch with Pit Command doesn't mean that you wouldn't really prefer Race View or just like to listen to the Scanner. See if you like it. It gives an added depth to my understanding of NASCAR Cup Racing. I sure wish it were available on the Trucks.