DON'T BLAME THE MAN UPSTAIRS

A NASCAR spotter's job is to sense trouble before it happens, from more than a half a mile away. Results may vary.

by Ryan McGee

Charles Lindbergh swore that voices saved his life.

In 1927, deep within the loneliest moments of his 33-hour transatlantic flight, Lindy's plane was blanketed by heavy fog. He was tired, cold, hungry and unaware that his aircraft was in a downward loop toward the North Atlantic. Then the pilot realized he was not alone. "At times, the voices come out of the air itself," he recalled in his memoir, The Spirit of St. Louis. "Clear yet far away, traveling through distances that can't be measured by the scale of human miles, familiar voices, conversing and advising on my flight, discussing problems of my navigation, reassuring me … " Those voices may have been imaginary, but they were the difference between Lindbergh's finding the coast of Europe and splashing down somewhere south of Iceland.

Five years ago, on a fall afternoon at Talladega, Elliott Sadler felt a lot like Lindbergh. His No. 38 Ford Taurus was airborne at 195 mph, spiraling toward the ground while the disoriented driver hung on for dear life. Then Sadler was reminded he was not alone. "Hang on, bud … You'll be all right … " Lindy never knew who or what spoke to him during his flight. But as Sadler's car finished its sixth and final flip and came to rest on the infield, he knew exactly who had talked him through his brush with death: "Brett Griffin, a Gamecock-loving redneck from Pageland, S.C." Off the track, the 33-year-old Griffin is Sadler's business manager and close friend. On the track—or, more accurately, high above it—he is Sadler's spotter, a second set of eyes and ears in a sport so fast and unforgiving that one pair is no longer adequate. Quite simply, Griffin's job is the most underappreciated, invaluable job at the track.

"THE CAR IS IN MY HANDS, BUT MY CAREER AND MY LIFE ARE IN BRETT'S." - ELLIOT SADLER

A NASCAR spotter watches his assigned car and protects it as his own. He lives in his driver's earbuds from Friday's first practice through Sunday's checkered flag, helping him tiptoe through traffic and stay focused on the task at hand. While a crew chief chimes in over the radio about fuel strategies and tire changes, the spotter's words are a driver's best friend. Consequently, a spotter is equal parts shrink, motivational speaker, messenger, seer, treaty negotiator, driver's ed instructor and life preserver. "There isn't a single driver out there who wants to mess around three-wide at 180 mph without a spotter," Sadler says. "The car is in my hands, but my career and my life are in Brett's."

No pressure.

"It's like being a referee or an offensive lineman," says Griffin, who has spotted for Sadler since 2000 and can collect up to $1,500 for a weekend's work. (Like Griffin, most spotters have a separate job with their team or driver.) "You do it right, nobody notices and you go home. But screw up, and everybody knows you're up there. When you climb down after a wreck, people are lined up to either point you out or punch you."

"Up there" is a platform high atop the track known as the spotter stand. It's little more than an aluminum riser bolted to the roof of the speedway's press box. Every track has one, but while newer venues feature spotter decks with plenty of room to roam, the stands at older speedways, like Darlington and Martinsville, can feel like chicken coops. Enclosed by guardrails, the 43 Sprint Cup spotters group-shiver their way through winter and sweat all over one another in summer. For four straight hours on race day they must never let their guard down. There are no bathroom breaks, and spotters have to bring their own provisions. Peek into the backpack of Shannon McGlamery, Jeff Gordon's spotter, on his way up to the stand, and you'll find it jammed with wide-angle binoculars, two radios (with extra batteries), two headsets (in case one craps out), bottled water, a handful of cereal bars and plenty of Goody's Headache Powder. It's the toolbox he needs to paint a verbal picture of everything his driver can't see.

Drivers' blind spots have multiplied considerably since 2001, thanks to the post-Earnhardt safety revolution that's crammed the cockpit with larger headrests, bulkier seats, extra padding and head and neck restraints. Although the Car of Tomorrow's huge rear wing has added downforce, it has also nearly blacked out the entire rear windshield, meaning nary a pass is made without asking for advice from upstairs first. A spotter's dream is guiding his car through the pass that wins the race; his nightmare is causing the wreck that ruins it.

"People ask me all the time what's the hardest part of the job," Griffin says. "It's saying the word clear. It's the word we say the most, and the most important thing we say. If I say 'clear,' that means he's made the pass and has room to slide it back up the track. If I screw up, I cost my driver the race, and a couple of teams a lot of money and a hell of a lot of man-hours at the shop. All because I was off by a few inches on something I saw for a split-second from a half-mile away."

A quarter of the way into the Pocono 500, on June 8, Kyle Busch was easing his Toyota around the left of Jamie McMurray's Ford. Thinking the pass was finished, Busch whipped his ride to the right, inadvertently smacking McMurray and sending both cars into the wall. The move not only sent Busch to the pits for the rest of the race, but it also sliced 121 points off his lead in the Cup standings. In a TV interview from his trailer afterward, Busch explained that he'd been racing with a broken rearview mirror, then aimed his cannon at the spotter stand: "I couldn't clear myself. The spotter didn't say anything. It sucks."

"Did it suck being called out? Of course it did," says Busch's spotter, Jeff Dickerson, who also serves as his agent. "But on the flight home, Kyle and I always break down the race. We did the same thing after Pocono. We watched the tape and agreed that we wrecked, and we were cool again. If I'm going to get thanked in Victory Lane for helping him win a race, I need to be prepared to be ripped if I lose him one."

On the Monday morning after Pocono, several other spotters called Dickerson to tell him to shake it off. "We're way more tight knit than the drivers," says Joel Edmonds, a 10-year vet who has been with Greg Biffle since 2002. "We eat dinner together, talk on the phone. There are only a handful of people who really know what it's like to be up on the spotter stand, to know that feeling in your stomach when you cause a big wreck. By the way, I haven't caused a wreck in a long, long time. Make sure you write that."

DRIVERS' BLIND SPOTS HAVE MULTIPLIED CONSIDERABLY SINCE 2001, THANKS TO THE POST-EARNHARDT SAFETY REVOLUTION THAT'S CRAMMED THE COCKPIT WITH LARGER HEADRESTS, BULKIER SEATS, EXTRA PADDING AND HEAD AND NECK RESTRAINTS.

Spotters are an eclectic bunch, and surprisingly few have driving experience. Of the 43 who work Sprint Cup races, only nine have logged laps behind the wheel in one of NASCAR's top three series, and only one—1994 Nationwide Series champ David Green, who moonlights as a spotter for several drivers—has a significant Cup résumé. The others are a mix of mechanics, business managers, buddies and family members who, through friendship or kinship, feel duty-bound to serve as a driver's guardian angel. David Reutimann races with the help of first cousin Shawn Reutimann, while Ryan Newman is guided by the oldest resident of the spotter stand, his 55-year-old father, Greg. "I didn't want to do it," says the elder Newman. "I thought it'd be too emotional. Then I heard other spotters explain things to him and realized I could explain the same things a lot quicker. I speak his language."

The spotter stand, like the paddock, comes with a hierarchy. In the middle of the bleachers, with the best view, reside the old-timers: 49-year-old Eddie Masencup (Casey Mears' No. 5 Chevy) and 39-year-old Rocky Ryan (Jeff Burton's No. 31 Chevy) are known as The Mayors, with decades of spotting experience between them. Those of mid-tenure, like Griffin, fan out from there, preferring to stand next to the spotter of their team's other car for quick access to pit or drafting strategies. The newbies, who are often hired on a race-by-race basis, grab bleacher space wherever they can find it. Predictably, their nervous tics annoy the vets. "Those guys do a lot of shouting and tapping you on the shoulder to ask questions in the middle of a race," Dickerson says. "Eventually you have to turn to 'em and say, 'Damn, dude, I'm a little busy here.'"

In a 60-year-old sport, spotting is still a relatively new art form. The first known use of spotters came during a 1952 Sportsman Division (now Nationwide Series) race on the treacherous 4.1-mile Daytona Beach and Road Course. Driver Al Stevens, a radio man during World War II, stowed a handheld Army walkie-talkie under his seat and used it to communicate with pals scattered along the course. "Extra eyes were a good idea that day," says NASCAR Hall of Fame historian Buz McKim, "because there were 118 cars in the race."

Over the next three decades, the idea failed to catch on. Old-school racers viewed spotting—a borrowed military term used by drivers who'd just come back from WWII—as cheating. "I think I was the first guy to use two-way radios to win a race, at Riverside in 1971," Bobby Allison says with a wink and a smile. "As far as I know, the only guy I was talking to was my crew chief. If someone else was on that frequency, I couldn't have helped that."

By the mid-1980s, teams were using spotters in the open; by the '90s, the practice was mandated. Up until a few seasons ago, it was common for spotters to walk back and forth along the stand, making deals with one another to help their drivers move up. But nowadays, as the sport has become faster and more dangerous, spotters like to bunker in, listening to rivals via second radios and stepping out to negotiate only when the situation grows dire. The extra concentration has helped reduce crashes. "Of the 43 guys who are up there now, 36 are great at what they do," Edmonds says. "Ten years ago, we had maybe 10 really good ones."

Like a rock star's roadie, anyone attached to a top-flight NASCAR driver gets to enjoy the wake—and weight—of his celebrity. Race fans eavesdrop on their favorite teams' radio conversations via frequency scanners, online streaming, pay-per-view and satellite radio. As a result, no secrets are safe, and Joe Fan gets to second-guess the decisions made by the man on the spotter stand. "I guess fans think, I can't be a driver and I can't be a crew chief, but I bet I can spot!" says T.J. Majors, spotter for Dale Earnhardt Jr. Majors grew up in New York State, dreaming of being a NASCAR driver. Without a ride, he honed his skills in the world of online gaming, where he befriended a rival player living in Mooresville, N.C., a guy who goes by the name of Junior. Impressed with Majors' skills in the DMP Online Racing League, Earnhardt hired him as a prospective driver. Now the 28-year-old Majors lives on Junior's farm and has spotted for him in Cup since last fall. "I've done enough racing, online and in real life, to know spotting is a helluva lot more stressful than people think," Majors says.

That stress doesn't end with the checkered flag. Most spotters can't sleep after a big race. Their eyes are sore for days, worn out from hours of staring through binoculars and not blinking. Their knees are swollen from the nonstop standing. "We're totally wired after a race," Majors says. "Dale and I will start yelling at each other on the way to the airport. He'll be like, 'What the hell were you thinking when you told me I was clear on lap so-and-so?' And I'm like, 'You didn't wreck, did you?' Eventually we apologize. It's like we're married."

MOST SPOTTERS CAN'T SLEEP AFTER A BIG RACE. THEIR EYES ARE SORE FOR DAYS, WORN OUT FROM HOURS OF STARING THROUGH BINOCULARS AND NOT BLINKING.

Like any marriage, the driver-spotter relationship is based almost entirely on trust. "Trust and a crystal ball," Edmonds says with a laugh. "A good spotter has to be able to predict what's going to happen three laps into the future. And there's no real way to practice it. You learn by spotting for practice sessions and lower-level races, by sitting in with a veteran or by listening over the scanners to what other spotters are saying. It doesn't matter what your background is, because when you put on that radio, your driver knows instantly if you know what you're doing."

The final lap of this year's Daytona 500 is a case in point. All day long, Greg Newman had been tracking trends—which cars were drafting well together, which line was the fastest, who couldn't be trusted. He made notes, written and mental. Then, one-and-a-half miles from the checkered flag, and with Ryan Newman several spots back, the father saw all the cars in front of his son line up just right. He frantically radioed down to his boy as the Red Sea suddenly started parting in front of the No. 12 Dodge. "Stay on that high side … "

Greg remembered that a year earlier Kevin Harvick had come from behind to win by riding the high groove. "Ryan, you've got the 2 behind you, with help behind him … " He knew that Kurt Busch, his son's Penske Racing teammate, wasn't above attempting a goofy last-lap pass, but he also knew that Busch had been feuding with race leader Tony Stewart all week, and the opportunity to push Newman past him would be too delicious to pass up. "This is going to open up here … " He knew from watching Stewart all night that he would grab the low line as soon as he could get it, especially with teammate Kyle Busch coming to push him. "Here it is … clear all around … go … go … GO!"

"When I hit the back straightaway, his voice picked way up," Ryan says with a smile. "I knew something good was about to happen. As his excitement went up, it calmed me down."

A voice out of the air itself, clear yet far away, conversing, advising and reassuring. All the way to Victory Lane.

For a look at what spotter Brett Griffin says he fears most, check this out.

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