NASCAR race control radio revealed officials fuming at Joey Logano for bringing out caution at Daytona

NASCAR has some new communications tech in play and it might need some tweaking after inadvertent audio was picked up that showed race officials upset with Joey Logano for bringing out a caution flag at Daytona. Bubba Wallace‘s spotter, Freddie Kraft, revealed the snafu on the Door Bumper Clear podcast on Monday.

Essentially, in an effort to improve communications with teams after earlier issues in the season with caution flags, NASCAR introduced some new tech. It works exceptionally well, apparently.

And so a string of profanities directed at Logano when he spun with fewer than 40 laps remaining was caught by multiple teams. Kraft explained.

“So we have a new device that we use to scan race control for the spotters,” he said. “And it is clear as day. It sounds like (race control’s) Jusan (Hamilton) is sitting next to you talking to you. It’s great. The other officials don’t have it, like on the racetrack, whoever’s on pit road or some of the clean-up trucks, they don’t have the same thing, so it sounds like your normal radio. But like when it’s Jusan on the same system that you’re on, it sounds amazing.

“The problem with it is you can also hear, it’s so good that you can also hear some of the stuff that’s going on behind Jusan. And when Logano spun and he kind of drove back up onto the racetrack you could hear some people in the background that were not very happy with him. And used some choice words I can’t repeat because we have sensors on these shows sometimes.”

NASCAR, like many, would prefer fewer cautions. It’s better for the product and keeps things flowing smoothly.

Daytona actually didn’t have all that many cautions late, but Logano’s was a key one. He spun from the lead and wound up in the infield grass.

Kraft went on to explain more about the new NASCAR tech, breaking down the problem it was supposed to solve and how it might need some tweaking going forward. He continued:

“We might have to retool that so we can’t hear everything in that room. But it was funny to hear,” he said, before describing the new product. “I wish I could tell you the name of it. It’s just like a belt pack that you guys use on pit road, but now it’s like an intercom system I think. I haven’t used it yet because I’m superstitious and we had it at Indy and I didn’t use it at Indy and we won. So the other night I didn’t use it because I thought maybe we would win again. Just wrecked the whole field. So I haven’t used it, but it gets rave reviews from the spotters of how clear it is, the tower.”

Kraft explained that NASCAR has sometimes had issues communicating caution flags clearly to the teams. That’s an obvious safety concern.

“NASCAR issues us a digital radio at the beginning of the year that has race control in it that we’re supposed to use,” Kraft said. “And we’ve had issues hearing caution flags. I don’t know what it is, when they hit the button and they key up to say, ‘put it out,’ something gets overlapped where you don’t hear ‘put it out.’ So the yellow’s out and you don’t know it.

“So we’ve been trying to come up with something different to fix that and this is the next step in that process. But it’s clear as day and maybe it’s a little too clear.”