Eric Thompson: On the race radio in the pits

Mark Winterbottom of Ford Performance Racing, comes home first. Photo / Edge Photographics

I thought I had aced it when I was sent to Sydney to cover the last round of the V8 Supercars, the Telstra 500, last weekend, but little did I know that I'd get among the action.

On Sunday the PR guy for Stone Brothers Racing, Dave Harding, asked me if I wanted to experience what it was like to watch a race from the pit garage. I'd be hooked up to a radio headset and listen to what was going on between the engineers of Shane van Gisbergen and Tim Slade.

To get the inside running and ear wig the chatter between the calm and reasoned resolve of the engineer, and a bloke fizzing around a concrete chute at god knows how many kilometres an hour, would be incredible. And it was.

Being mere metres from the action visually is information overload that adds a whole new dimension.

In a pit garage there's a constant kinetic energy just bubbling below the surface ready to explode into action.

Not to be privy to discussion between driver and team leaves a vital cog missing from the understanding of how a team works during a race.

For example, the engineer might see an accident happen on the far side of the race track from where the driver is and so relays the information.

Almost instantly the driver will be asking if the accident is on the inside, outside or in the middle of the track while manhandling a tonne or two of bellowing V8 at 200km/h just millimetres from another behemoth in front of him.

Van Gisbergen then asked, with just a hint of heavy breathing as he wrestled the car through a tight chicane, how much debris was on the track and what the racing line looked like.

At times listening to the conversation is akin to being in a foreign country. I'm pretty sure when the engineer asked Van Gisbergen to go to "trim two" he wasn't asking the Gis to bring him back two trim flat white coffees next time he was in the pits.

There were many discussions about changing sway and roll bar settings and all sorts of other knob and button fiddling all at damn near the speed of sound as the car hurtled around the streets of Olympic Park.

At one point Van Gisbergen mentioned he wasn't going to do anything silly and take it a bit easy on the damp track. Moments later he came on the radio as he fizzed up the escape road and said, "Oops, sorry about that", and carried on his merry way again.

There's hardly a moment's quiet between drivers and engineers. When they're not discussing the car's fuel burn, handling, grip, balance, pit strategy or where the leaders are and their nearest rival in the championship, the engineer is passing on calm words of encouragement. When things get hectic on the race track a crew member might say: "You're doing fine, your lap times are good, stay calm."

One thing I had forgotten about being in the pits during a pit stop, is how bloody fast the cars motor along pit lane. On TV they look so slow but that's only because you're used to watching them on the screen at monster speeds. Put it this way - I wouldn't want to be standing in the way of a car as it arrives in its pit box.

It was a truly amazing insight into what goes on during a race. Who said men can't multi-task? Of course we can, especially at speed in a flying brick where the smallest mistake will end in the biggest mess - we just have to be concentrating.