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American LeMans
HOWE: Sebring At Last!
SPEED pit reporter Jamie Howe files her first column for SPEEDtv.com ahead of the American Le Mans Series season-opening Twelve Hours of Sebring.
Jamie Howe  |  Posted March 18, 2010   Sebring, FL
Jamie Howe files her first Voices of SPEED column ahead of the American Le Mans Series season-opening Twelve Hours of Sebring. (JamieHowe.com)
It’s hard to imagine I’ll be starting my third season working the pit lane for SPEED, and my eighth year in the American Le Mans Series. I’ve seen the sport from many different angles since starting as a runner back in 2003, doing odd jobs for the production team and working my way up the ladder to where I am today. It’s a dream come true to be back for another season and I’m happy to also share my experiences this year on SPEEDtv.com.

As I quickly found out at the Sebring Winter Test last month, a lot has changed during the off-season. The biggest addition obviously are the two new season-long Challenge classes. In previous years, you’d go to the Winter Test and see all of the familiar faces from the year before. But this year there were so many new faces, it was a little bit overwhelming! I found myself running around thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know who any of these people are. I don’t know any of these team managers. I’ve never seen these crew guys. I’ve never seen these cars.’

In previous years, there were only 12-15 cars at the Winter Test, nothing that you couldn’t manage to cover in two days. But with so many cars there this year, there was no way to talk to every single person that you needed to talk to. The test was a little bit overwhelming to say the least, and it’s going to take more prep work during the race week to prepare for the race than usual.


The biggest and most important job for us as pit reporters is to gather the endless amounts of information before the race. I have to write most of it down in order to remember it. I would like to say that I could keep it all filed away in my head, but it would all get mixed up.


I’ve learned over the years that it’s different when you talk to each person in their own position. When you talk to drivers, it’s more of a direct line of questions, asking their impressions on adjustments made the their car or their mental approach to a 12-hour race. When you talk to the team managers, you ask them more background-style questions like how long the team has been together, and how well the crew members work together and dig deep to see if there are any holes in the program. And when it comes to talking to engineers, if you have a good relationship with them, then they’ll get down to the nuts and bolts with you. But for the most part, you have to build that kind of relationship with most people because they’re not just going to tell you something. So it makes it a little more challenging to get the information from new teams because you have to build that re pour with them first.


I’ve also learned that once the race starts, there’s no more homework you can do. The purpose of doing the homework is to have little nuggets of information to fill the dead time. But once the green flag falls, there’s a whole new list of stories that unfolds, and that’s what the viewers care about. They don’t really care that a driver had a great training regimen in the off-season. That’s just a little nugget you can fill in during a pit report. What they care about is that a driver on track is out of steam and isn’t sure he can finish the race. That’s when you really have to be on top of your game.

The safety aspect of our job is the biggest thing to keep an eye out for. Because you’re so built up in the moment, you sometimes forget that you’re actually on a hot pit lane. Cars are diving in and pulling out, and you’re standing there as close to the car as anyone could dream of being. That’s the coolest part of my job, because you’re seeing everything right up in front of you instead of being behind the pit wall.


It’s hard to keep your excitement in line while trying to explain to the viewers at home exactly what they’re seeing. It’s important to know how all of the cars are put together because when they come in for a pit stop and start tinkering with the car, you need to know what exactly they’re working on. You always have to keep an open eye and ear for everything while patrolling the pits. I scan the team radios during the broadcast, which helps a lot. But it also means that I’m listening to three sets of audio at once: the broadcast, the producers and team radio communication. That can be a lot to manage at times.

When you’re on air, you often forget that there’s multiple cameras watching us on pit lane, and I was caught up in a funny moment last year at Mosport. I was trying to get my pit colleague Justin Bell’s attention and was jumping up and down and waving my arms and everything. The track camera ended up getting all of that on video and they started saying, ‘Jamie’s dancing in pit lane!‚ There’s a lot of little things that you forget about when you’re in the moment, but it’s important to keep a high awareness for anything that might pop up.

But what makes Sebring stand out from the rest of the races, for me, is the sheer amount of fans. While it’s great to have such a large turnout of spectators, it’s sometimes difficult trying to dodge the thousands of fans while on the grid or in victory lane. People see the end result on TV, but don’t see how difficult of a job it is for us reporters to get the actual interview before or after a race. We’re often frantically running around trying to find the right person and managing the thousands of people that are trying to get up close and see their favorites.


The great thing is that once you get through Sebring, as far as the research and prep work goes, it really gives you a strong foundation for the rest of the season. If we were going into a race like Long Beach first, because it’s such a shortened race weekend, we would never have enough time to gather enough information to cover the event. But because we have the entire week at Sebring to gather all of this raw information, stuff we’ll never even have time to use in the Sebring broadcast, we’ll space it throughout the entire year. Even though it’s the biggest race, and the most stressful race, from my perspective, it’s the best one to have first.

I’m also excited that our entire broadcast team will be covering live qualifying on SPEEDtv.com this year. Be sure to tune in Friday to follow all of the action before the green flag drops on Saturday. It’s shaping up to be a great year, and I’m glad to be along for the ride!

~Jamie

Sports Car Insider and SPEED personality, Jamie Howe, returns to pit lane for American Le Mans Series broadcasts in 2010. Jamie has covered a wide range of Auto Racing on SPEED including Patron GT3 Challenge, World Challenge and Star Mazda. She has grown as a media professional and also produces race broadcasts airing on SPEED. To learn more about Jamie, visit MY.SPEEDtv.com/Jamie_howe or JamieHowe.com.

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The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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