We have all seen the shots. Low front-bumper angles blurring the landscape. Rear-bumper shots proving who is trading paint with whom. Shots of a driver sawing at his wheel while racing three or four abreast. Those amazing views and many more come from in-car cameras. Miniature cameras strategically placed in a car can give viewers some of the most spectacular shots in sports. The cameras have invaded almost all forms of sport and they are certainly not new to NASCAR, but how and why they are in the cars has changed.
Sponsors and fans alike have come to expect in-car camera telecasts for every race. What was once a clever way of mounting a typical camera has grown into a big business-as the camera shrinks in size, the profits have grown. In-car camera technology has progressed right along with demand, and today's racing fans have more ways than ever to get close to the action.
"We don't leave the equipment in the cars," says Reichert, "but, for example, we go to a few short tracks, like Martinsville, and put holes in a couple of short track cars. As the season progresses, we then go to a superspeedway like Talladega where a team will run a different car altogether. We then come back to a track like Richmond and, more than likely, the car is the same one they had Martinsville, so we have already put holes in it. A lot of times the shots are dictated by the holes that are put in the car-the teams don't like anyone to make Swiss cheese out of their car."
With the holes already drilled, Reicherts deploys a two-man crew-one for outside installs the other for inside-that can get a three-camera car ready in about 20-30 minutes, sans any interruptions. There can be times when the installers have to put their work on hold while the racing team prepares the car for the upcoming race. Reicherts calls this stoppage of work "garage etiquette."
"We are trying to work around the car's team," Reicherts explains, "and probably the hardest thing BST has had to do was to be accepted by the teams. When I started with BST, we were not very well-liked. Now we are accepted in the preparations, and even a lot of the teams that we do every week look at our guys as part of the crew. But there are certain times we can work on the car and certain times we can't. My guys recognize this and don't have to be told when to back off. In an hour install, we may have what we call 'hands-off time,' like when the car is on the scales or when the driver is still sitting in the car."
Tiny Cameras, Big BusinessThe growth of NASCAR as a business has been obvious, and the business of in-car cameras has grown right along with it. There are long lines of sponsors waiting to get an in-car camera, and the networks are scrambling to accommodate every one of them. Adroit sponsors know which tracks their drivers perform best on, so those are the ones they target, but sometimes there can be a little boat rocking.
"There can be some behind-the-scenes bickering between the sponsors to get the best track aired for their drivers," Reichert illustrates. "For example, if a sponsor is contracted to the road courses but has changed to a driver who isn't particularly 'versed' in the road courses, it doesn't behoove the sponsors to have that new driver at the road course. But, if this new driver is good at the short tracks, then the sponsors may make a trade with another sponsor to get the in-car camera for their short-track stints. So, the sponsors are always trying to get a good fit. But these dealings don't really mean too much to us. The only time it affects us is when the dealings sometimes happen even on race morning. So then we have what we call last minute installs or race-day installs-and that is not good. The reason is that the race-day installs don't give us any practice time, and we basically go on the track with an unproved system in a car."
BST personnel generally decide where the cameras are placed in a race car. In the past, the selection has come down to Reichert himself, but now many outside interests are important factors in determining the best placement for the cameras.
"We select the camera shots based on a lot of experience," says Reichert. "Originally, when I first started in this, there was more artistic license, and the sponsors weren't as involved. A lot of the location selection had to do with aerodynamic advantages or disadvantages that the teams may have or at least felt they had. But, as NASCAR has grown into big business, the sponsors are hovering over us when we put the cameras in because they want to know which shots they are going to get. They also want to know about their 'sticker space' which is the amount of space the sponsors can put their decals and still be seen by the in-car cameras. Sticker space factors into about 95 percent of the decision-making process on where the cameras go.
"So a lot of the shots that we had in '93 and '94 that didn't necessarily have sticker space-like on the front valance or down under the car-we can't really do that anymore because the sponsors want sticker space. So, we get requests from the sponsors, and they sort of dictate where the cameras will go. But we do try to walk the fine line between artistic shots and keeping the sponsors happy. We have gotten into a mold that I have come to consider the 'cookie-cutter race,' and that consists of a roof camera, a rear bumper, and what we call our 360 camera inside. Those are our bread-and-butter shots."
Reichert says he recently met with NASCAR and ESPN Productions to revitalize the cookie-cutter shots by instituting some new camera angles. This would return creativity to in-car cameras. In the meantime, Reichert occasionally gets the go-ahead to mount a camera for a more artistic shot, which suits him just fine.
"What we will do in certain cases," says Reichert, "is if we show up at certain tracks and NASCAR has given us the green light on some 'trick shots,' is install a fourth camera if we have the equipment. Now, my philosophy on the fourth camera is the sponsor paid for three, so the fourth camera is mine, and I can put it where I want. That fourth camera is the one where we try to implement some of our old shots and try to get away from the cookie cutter. We have won Emmys several years in a row, and now we haven't won any in a while. ESPN's X-Games, which we are also involved in, has sort of bumped NASCAR racing out with its trick shots. But it is our goal to get back into the Emmy race."
Technically SpeakingBST is contracted to set up nine dif-ferent Winston Cup cars at every Winston Cup race. That equates to at least 3 cameras per car, for a total of 27 cameras. They also set up cameras on the pace car and in the pit area. BST's technological arsenal consists of four 48-foot trailers loaded with electronic and mechanical gear and about 125 cameras with about 30-40 different styles currently being built.
Among the installers and technical personnel, Reichert's "righthand men" are Paul Brunkhorst, who runs the in-car camera side of the remote; and Ken "Oz" Yokum, who oversees the handheld radio frequency cameras, the helicopter cameras, and the overhead cameras in the pits.
Despite the modern technology, there are limits to BST's equipment. Only four cameras per system can be placed in a car, but more than one system can be installed. A maximum of eight systems can run at one time due to the limitations of the BST helicopter and trailer. Rules established by NASCAR, the sponsors, and even some teams can also limit how much equipment Reichert's crew can use, but what they do use, and how they use it, is a technological symphony.
"When we install the stuff in the car, we install what is called a control hub," details Reichert, "which is a transmitter hub that has four camera ports and a microwave transmitter. The microwave transmitter sends the video signal up to a helicopter, which has a receiver and a transmitter pair for each car. So, for the eight cars that we are allowed to set up, we have eight of these pairs of receivers and trans-mitters. We look at eight cars at a time. We could install 12 cars or 24 cars but we can only see 8 at a time. That is why the helicopter is one of our limitations because it only has eight signal paths to it.
"Then the video that goes to the helicopter is retransmitted down to the roof of our trailer, which has an antenna hooked up to eight receivers in our trailer, and the receivers are designated for one car each.
We can control which cameras to select from the computer in the front of the trailer. Each car has a code so we can change the cameras assigned to that code. We can only look at one camera at a time in each car. Then we do our processing to the in-car video before the signal leaves our trailer and goes to the host network. So we actually have eight cables running over from our truck to their truck." Easy!
After The Checkered FlagOnce the race is over, most of the teams, save maybe the winning one, want to get packed up and head out of town as quickly as possible. Here lies another touchy situation for Reichert's team-how to get their equipment out of the car in a hurry without interfering in the race crew's work.
"One rule of thumb is that when the race is over the teams want to get out of there as quickly as possible," Reichert explains, "so before the vehicle is even on the truck, we get our equipment out. My guys are all waiting down there to retrieve the equipment when the cars pull in. We even have a few teams that help us pull the equipment. If we can't work quickly enough, we, myself included, have been known to go up inside of a boiling hot hauler in the middle of summer and take the equipment out. In fact, that is a lesson some of the crew chiefs like to teach my newer guys.
"A couple of years ago, Mike Beam, who was with Bill Elliott, taught a new guy that because the new guy was working on the car but stopped. He then said he would 'be right back,' well Mike didn't wait around; the new guy had to climb in the hauler. I saw Mike at the next race, and we had a good laugh at the rookie's mistake."
Rookies, however, aren't the only ones who have had some memorable moments.
"In years past, we have had guys stuck in cars-I have actually been stuck in a car," Reichert admits with a grin. "I was in a seat, upside down with my feet toward the ceiling and my head down by the pedals, while putting a foot camera in the Bud Moore #15 car back when Jeff Bodine was driving it. We try to put these cameras in such unique places that, well, my hips got stuck in the seat and I couldn't get out. I then got on my radio and had someone pull on my feet to get me out. Luckily, my radio was by my head or I don't know how long I would have been in that position."
Reichert's team has never had a camera come loose during a race-a fact of which he is very proud. There have been crew chiefs and owners in the past that have given Reichert's crew a "talking to" about some perceived mistake on BST's part. But Reichert believes those quarrels were mainly born of frustration by the team for a disappointing on-track performance.
Once the cameras are out, they are brought to the trailer, packed up, then returned to the BST shop in Odenton, Maryland, where they are cleaned and readied for the next weekend. This frenzied schedule leaves the BST crew with little time to themselves. "We have always considered ourselves as a race team," Reichert says. "We go a lot of weeks without any days off."
In-car cameras were originally a nuisance, but they became something the teams knew they had to deal with because they serve as another way of doing business, and now they are a way of doing bigger business. As more sponsors demand more cameras with more sticker space, in-car cameras may become more regulated. But watch out for that one shot, the one that isn't blocked by decals or the shot of concrete whizzing by at 180 mph while only a few inches away; for if you see those shots, you'll know Reichert had his way.Danny Reichert, remote operations engineer in charge for Broadcast Sports Technology (BST), was a test engineer for a defense contractor that built unmanned vehicles. In the late '80s, the defense budgets were getting cut, so projects were getting started but not finished-and this wasn't good enough for Reichert. He started with BST in January 1993 and is now in charge of all the "fendered" series that BST airs.
Reichert and his BST crew install and control the tiny cameras for a variety of sporting events including a "mask-cam(era)" for baseball, a "goal-cam" for hockey, and, of course, in-car cameras for NASCAR.
"We provide a service for and are contracted by the host network of the racing event," Reichert says, "whether they are ESPN, ABC, CBS, or whichever. We are told which sponsors or cars have purchased the in-car cameras for a particular race. It works basically like this-a network would come to us and say, 'We have nine cars contracted through us, and the sponsors have paid money for these nine cars to have video shot from them during the race.' The network then contracts us (for example, BST has a three-year contract with ESPN) to provide the in-car video, which they then air."
A crew of about 14-16, some for the in-car cameras and some for other track-based cameras, usually arrives in the race town on Thursday to prepare for a Sunday race. They cannot install the cameras until after the Winston Cup cars qualify. This gives the crew only about two hours to put the cameras in as many of the Winston Cup cars as they can, then Saturday morning, before their first practice, they try to complete the rest. Some cars, however, have more importance than others do.
"We sometimes hold off on cars that we feel may not qualify after the second round," Reichert says, "so we sort of play it by ear. The Mark Martins, the Rusty Wallaces-we can install in those cars fairly quickly. There are some guys struggling for that particular weekend, so we hold off until after the second round of qualifying."
Different Week, Different CarNASCAR teams commonly prepare separate cars to run on each type of track on the Winston Cup Series. The car that runs on Daytona will probably not run at Bristol or Watkins Glen. This poses a weekly problem for BST in that, though the team getting the cameras may not change, the car almost certainly will.
"There are so many different cars that a team uses in Winston Cup racing that you cannot really outfit one car and keep a system in that car from week to week, because they have their superspeedway cars and their short-track cars," says Reichert.
The BST crew will install the system, the car is rescaled, and then the racing team removes the necessary weight (each camera system weighs about 11 pounds) to compensate for the camera. If the BST crew starts from a fresh car-one that does not have any mounting holes drilled yet-a typical installation takes about an hour. The install time is much quicker if the car has already received a visit from Reichert's crew.