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A NASCAR BLOG BY Art Weinstein
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.
Art Weinstein
Managing Editor Art Weinstein has been covering NASCAR since 1995 and has worked at NASCAR Scene for 11 years.
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