As part of its new $53 million, 58,000 ft² productions facility in Concord, North Carolina, NASCAR has set aside a room that will eventually grow into a remote race control building operational before the end of the 2024 season.
While NASCAR will continue to have a full room of officials in the tower each week, this new facility is about providing those working on-site additional resources to make clearer and more concise calls each week.
Scott Miller, who NASCAR appointed head of special projects after a lengthy stint overseeing competition, is running point on the project. NASCAR Cup Series director Brad Moran says the room is still carpet but there is a vision set to come to life in the coming weeks and months.
“The ultimate goal is for us to be able to do some remote officiating,” Moran said. “There are certain things in the tower we’re going to have to have people on-site but even from a pit road standpoint, we’ve had people down in Charlotte review pit stops and call up race control.
“So that’s a thing that’s coming down the pipeline.”
Think of the room as something akin to replay review used by stick and ball sports, but there will also be an educational component to this room too.
“The other part is to also be able to train the next generation of race directors, next generation pit road officials, timing and scoring, all the functions that go into race control,” Moran said. “It gives us the ability to build that up.
“We don’t want it to be misconstrued that we’ll be doing all of our officiating remotely but we will be building out that ability.”
NASCAR’s vice president of safety engineering John Patalak likened it as the sanctioning body equivalent to the war rooms teams have at their shop. As NASCAR has worked to lower logistic expenses for both itself and teams, it’s been important for both parties to be able to accomplish jobs from North Carolina no matter where the race is.
“It’s a matter of simply being able to provide race control more resources,” Patalak said.
When would this become operational?
“Knowing Scott and knowing the cadence he has right now, we’re looking third quarter,” Moran said.
Before the playoffs?
“I think so. I think that’s a fair assessment.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.