In racing's earliest days, communication between the driver and crew chief was fairly straightforward. If a driver was doing well, the crew chief might hold up a pit signal board with a lap time or a "plus" or "minus" in one hand, and give him a "thumbs up" with the other. If a driver wasn't performing up to his ability, the same board would be used, although the encouraging hand signal might be a bit different.
Communication today is far more complex and a bit more expensive than a blackboard and pieces of chalk. On some tracks it is critical for success or failure. Sometimes it can mean the difference between bringing a car back with all the fenders still hanging on it, or as a pile of racing rubble.
Take a scanner to most stock car races and you can hear a team spotter telling a driver when there is traffic on the "inside" or "outside" of him. Spotters direct drivers to "go high" or "go low" to avoid a spinning car or squeeze through a hole in a partially blocked track, and will tell them when the track is about to "go green" or when the pits are closed. Drivers use the radios to tell a crew chief how the car is handling and call for changes during the next pit stop.
Communication is just as important to amateur racers running local short tracks as it is to Winston Cup drivers at Atlanta. But the price of a radio set for a budget racer is proportionately much higher.
"There's a lot of guys out there who really don't have much to spend on a radio system," says Jim Miller, who owns Racetech Racing Communications. "They think $1,000 is a lot of money to spend on a short-track radio system, but they forget that if it prevents one wreck, it has paid for itself."
The OptionsRadio systems offered today range from a low of about $500 to a high of $3,000 or more. Racing's truism again prevails: You get what you pay for. But you can also buy a lot more than you need.
The least expensive systems use the relatively new "Family Radio System" frequencies designed for talking over short distances-usually in a line-of-sight-and under conditions a lot quieter than a racetrack. Most of the FRS radios are about a quarter-watt of power and the law says you can't add to the antenna to enhance its ability. Some of the better ones have more power, but those are rare and proportionately more expensive.
With the advent of super-cheap cell phone rates, the FRS radios never caught on very well and the market is flooded with discounted merchandise selling for as little as $20 each at discount electronics outlets. That means that after buying the basic package for the driver and crew chief, you can equip every other member of the team with a hand-held unit and headset for under $50 each.
If you plan to run only small ovals and you don't need to discuss chassis changes very often because you run only short events, a low-power system may be all you need. "If the biggest track a team goes to is a half-mile, and they can be in a position where you can almost always see the car, they will probably do the job," says Hank Sams, who builds radio systems for Racing Communications.
Sams also says the basic FRS system can be purchased for about $500. "The best part about buying a system like that from a radio supplier is that the harness from the FRS plugs right into a more powerful system. It means you don't have to throw a lot of stuff away to upgrade. In most cases you just buy new radios."
He says tracks of three-quarters of a mile or longer will probably need a two-watt system. Most suppliers call that the basic $1,000 short-track package. "The packages don't vary a lot," Sams says. "The prices go up and down depending on who makes the radio. Some teams have a preference for one brand over the other. Within the same price range, they are all pretty much equal."