I'm a part-time participant in the Stewards-in-Training program, and I've gotten to watch - be - the Operating Steward on occasion. It's worth a visit to the tower to watch and listen, quite revealing.

One thing that really stuck in my brain is the (lack of?) quality of information coming from the corners. The Operating Steward's eyes and ears are on the corners; everything he/she knows is coming across the radio. Problem is, you're working with many different people of significantly differing personalities and significantly differing levels of handling of stress and significantly differing means of transmitting the information. An O/S can easily find him/herself calling a red flag all based on someone freaking out over a spinning car off track, or even allowing a local yellow when an observer calmly relates a pair of destroyed cars sitting on the racing circuit. Watkins Glen's peculiarities aside, it's really, really hard for the O/S to "know" for sure what's going on out there.

It's not a fair comparison, but contrast that to my observations a few years ago of the Race Control at Petite LeMans. A long-time friend, and ex-ALMS Race Director, Beaux Barfield invited a few of us to observe their race control, their team, and their procedures. The one thing that stuck out was that Beaux had a complete first-person view of the track in the form of cameras EVERYWHERE. He did not have to rely on second-hand reports of track condition; he could SEE it himself. He'd most certainly listen to what the observers were reporting, but he could temper that report with direct visibility, and he used those observations to make calls IMMEDIATELY rather than using precious time to gather more information to make the right call.

Same goes for the Runoffs at Road America. Laurie Sheppard invited me to watch Race Control in 2011. Same thing: full camera coverage along with what I'd consider "creme de la creme" of corner observers. More information, better decisions (not to mention a KICK ASS safety team at Road America that would hot-pull a damn Kenworth and trailer off the track as needed without disrupting the race action...)

Unfortunately, we rarely have access to those tools, so we have to do the best with what we have.

I do encourage racers to go up there some time and observe; it's some pretty revealing stuff.

GA