Some good news to share from Chicago race
This is going to sound like a paid advertisement. Trust me, it’s not. But after using a Sprint FanView for the first time, during last weekend’s Sprint Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway, I just have one thing to say: Every serious fan who attends races should have one.
The little black-and-gold devices have been around for a couple of years now, and I’ve seen them hanging on lanyards around the necks of many fans and reporters. I never thought I’d want one, because it seemed like technological overkill. I had a scanner, and a TV to watch the race on in the media center.
Also, I thought they’d be difficult to operate. But after the Sprint FanView rental person spent 20 seconds showing me the simple instructions, I told a co-worker, “A 4-year-old could operate this thing.”
My co-worker asked me, “So will you be able to figure it out?” It took a few seconds before I realized I had been insulted. I was too busy admiring my FanView.
The fun was just beginning. I monitored the scanner frequency of just about every driver during the race, and NASCAR officials, sometimes in scan mode, other times by punching in a driver’s car number. Yes, a good scanner will do all that, but FanView has a special feature, allowing you to replay any scanner broadcast from the past couple of minutes. Doesn’t matter if you missed it the first time. Say there’s a big incident, and you want to hear what a driver said after he hit the wall or ran the other guy into the wall. You can get a replay, just by entering that driver’s number.
I switched between many different video feeds, watching the race broadcast, then checking out the view from several in-car cameras. The little video screen is big enough that you can see what’s happening but not big enough to make it a hassle to carry around. There were numerous other features (stats, driver information, up-to-the-minute point standings) that I didn’t have time to get into, because the other stuff was so riveting.
I had more fun during that race than I’ve had at a race in a long time. I felt plugged into everything. Other fans and people on pit road were even stopping me to check out replays of incidents.
As I said, this is not a paid advertisement, so you won’t find purchase information, pricing, or any of those details here. (Hint: If you Google “Sprint Fan View,” you’ll find all that information.
But I had so much fun, I had to share the good news. I know I’ll be buying one of those gadgets before my next race.
