Race Control: A look into the nerve centre of a motorsport event

While the focus has been on the circuit, the lighting systems, and barriers ahead of Chennai’s inaugural street race, the nerve centre of a motorsport event is a place in the paddock called Race Control.

Race Control room has TV screens focused on every corner and other electronic gadgets. Race officials will closely monitor every inch of the track from 28 cameras installed around the 3.5 km circuit.  | Photo Credit: Siva Sankar Arokaran/ Sportstar

It takes a village to run a motorsport event where precision, accuracy, and efficiency are expected from every single actor involved, be it drivers, mechanics, engineers, or officials. While the focus has been on the circuit, the lighting systems, and barriers ahead of Chennai’s inaugural street race, the nerve centre of a motorsport event is a place in the paddock called Race Control.

This room on Island Grounds is where the whole race operation is handled under the supervision of 12 to 16 officials.

The room has TV screens focused on every corner and other electronic gadgets. Race officials will closely monitor every inch of the track from 28 cameras installed around the 3.5 km circuit. 

“This is where we monitor all activity on the race track. We are here to ensure, mitigate, and negate the dangerous situations that can arise on the track as much as possible,” says Farhan Vohra, the Race Director, who is the ultimate authority responsible for running the event.

The Clerk of the Course (CoC) sits next to the Race Director and oversees race operations. The CoC communicates wirelessly with the track marshals to inform them about incidents or other disruptions and instruct them on what to do in case of one.

There will be more than 300 marshals involved during the two-day weekend. The flag marshals communicate race control’s instructions to the drivers by waving colour-coded flags about the track’s condition and any potential danger on the circuit. There will also be digital flags that flash coloured lights to indicate what flag has been deployed. 

The intervention marshals attend to a driver who has stopped on the circuit because of a crash or a car issue, remove debris from the circuit, and even put out fires in a car.

While the circuit has 19 corners, Vohra says certain corners will be treated as super-critical areas due to the high approach speed, and officials will pay close attention to those sections.

“The safety mechanism built in can’t be compared to anything available worldwide. We have used state-of-the-art materials for safety installations and crash absorption devices,” assures Vohra.