These Guys Make Sure Drivers, Crews Receive No Static

The airwaves will be full when three NASCAR divisions come to California Speedway at Fontana this weekend, and a company with an office in Santa Clarita will be helping everything go smoothly.

Racing Radios of Forest Park, Ga., provides radio equipment to every North American auto racing sanctioning body except the National Hot Rod Assn. and handles driver-crew communications for a majority of racing teams.

The company was started out of the back of a van in 1979 by John Thornton. Richard Petty was the company’s first customer and the business quickly grew as the importance of radio communication increased.

Thornton’s 31-year-old son, Chris Thornton, president of the company, said Racing Radios services the officials of all NASCAR divisions--CART, the Indy Northern Lights Racing Series and the American Le Mans Racing Series. He declined to provide names of individual teams that use his company’s services, but stated that every CART team, about 65% of the NASCAR Winston Cup teams and about 50% of the NASCAR Busch Grand National Teams are clients.

Racing Radios also has contracts with several tracks operated by International Speedway Corp. and Speedway Motorsports Corp., the two largest speedway operating companies in America. TrackScan, which rents scanners to racing fans, is a partner.

The Santa Clarita office, headed by Jim White, provides equipment and frequencies to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the NASCAR Winston West Series, as well as several tracks in the western United States.

White began the local end of the operation in 1988, selling Racing Radios equipment out of a trailer provided by the Thorntons.

Racing Radios began servicing the equipment and supplying White with inventory, and in 1995 White opened the Santa Clarita storefront office that employs his cousin, Cheryl White, and Kaye Sedgwick, who used to manage the pit gate at Saugus Speedway and is the wife of Winston West regular Bill Sedgwick.

“It just grew and grew until it became part of the company,” Chris Thornton said of White’s operation. “He’s part of the family now.”

The logistics of providing communications for NASCAR officials are challenging.

NASCAR stations an official in every pit to watch for rules violations and enforce penalties. Additionally, NASCAR has a race director and a safety director in the scoring tower, with the facility’s director of operations close by.

“They roll the wreckers, ambulances and safety crews,” Chris Thornton said. “The officials operate on eight to 10 different channels and the track operates on its own system. We have to have a package that works with both systems and it’s quite an ordeal.”

Chris Thornton said the airwaves can get salty during a race, and although Racing Radios helps the users obtain the proper licenses, responsibility for keeping transmissions free from George Carlin’s infamous list of dirty words lies with the users.

“The only time I ever heard a complaint was at about a year and a half ago at Sears Point [Raceway in Sonoma] during a NASCAR Craftsman Truck race,” he said. “A guy came up to me who had been letting his 5-year-old son listen to a scanner and a driver lost traction in the hairpin during qualifying.

“He started cussing, and his crew chief told him to watch his language because you never know who is listening, and the driver responded with a comment about the fans.”

Thornton referred the man to NASCAR officials, who called the driver and truck owner in for a discussion about appropriate speech over the airwaves.

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Irwindale Speedway will host the Foods 4 Less 100 NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour Series race Saturday night.

Defending Winston West champion Sean Woodside of Saugus will be looking for his second consecutive victory after winning the second event of the series March 24 at Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield.

“We feel good about our chances at Irwindale, especially coming off of our first win,” said Woodside, who has been competing in the super late model class at Irwindale on weekends when the Featherlite Tour is off. “We’re ready for another good race. I’ve been running at Irwindale in their weekly program, clicking off laps and trying to get an advantage to prepare for this race.”

Craig Raudman of Valencia, a Featherlite Tour regular, will miss the Irwindale event to compete in the Pontiac Wide Track Grand Prix 200 Winston West race at California Speedway.