Postcards from the Paddock - Tokyo to Sonoma

With a trip to Japan for the inaugural Tokyo E-Prix immediately followed by the season opener for SRO America at Sonoma Raceway, the last two weeks have been both exhausting and exhilarating. After a stop-and-start first few months of 2024, it now feels like the season has started in earnest and I'm pleased to say there isn't much letup for the next seven months.

This stretch of work actually started on March 24 when I worked the IndyCar exhibition at the Thermal Club for IndyCar Radio from the network's studio in Indianapolis, which was a new experience. Plenty of ink has been spilled elsewhere regarding the merits of that event and its format. My conclusion was that the exhibition was demonstrably better than the alternative (having no IndyCar race at all that weekend) and I'm confident that should the event return in '25 it will be with an updated structure.

The next day it was off to Japan for me ahead of my second Formula E assignment of the season. This was an especially noteworthy trip for me; though I lived in Japan with my family from 1995 to 1998, I had not been back since we moved back to the States early in the summer of '98. Consequently I elected to spend additional time — nearly a week and a half in total — in Japan to ensure I had time to go and revisit some of the places I had not seen in over a quarter of a century.

The icing on the cake was that I would not be going alone. My dad, who has worked off and on in Japan for decades in addition to the three years we spent living there, also came along, making this a truly unforgettable experience. Together we found our old house and my former school.

Outside my family’s former home in Ashiya, Japan

We went to the corner store that I used to frequent as a kid and picked out some of my favorite, nostalgia-riddled snacks. He also took me to his longstanding Japanese barber, introduced me to work colleagues I hadn't seen since I was in grade school, and took me to many of his favorite restaurants and watering holes. The experience was decades in the making and it did not disappoint.

In between the sightseeing and reminiscences was an action-packed work weekend at the inaugural Tokyo E-Prix. A race through the city streets of Tokyo had been on Formula E's agenda since its inception and expectations that the event would deliver on ten years of promise were high. In my estimation, the event absolutely met those expectations. The track, which featured the typical tight turns of a Formula E street circuit, also boasted a few high speed, high commitment sections that put the bravery of the drivers on display. A few massive drops in elevation down the ramps outside the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center also made for some incredible views for the spectators on site and the television audience at home.

The race very nearly had the perfect storybook ending, too. The crowd was packed with Nissan partisans waving flags, unsurprisingly as it is the only Japanese brand in the series and the company's headquarters in Yokohama is only an hour or so away from the circuit. Nissan driver Oliver Rowland started on pole and led the bulk of the race before ultimately fading to second while conserving energy late in the going. The Japanese fans nevertheless seemed thrilled by the spectacle of the first (legal) street race ever held in Tokyo, and Maserati driver Maxi Guenther's win was more than deserving. The German has been punching above his weight and that of the Maserati MSG team all season and now has a win to go along with his 100% rate of scoring points through five races this season.

From a broadcast perspective, it is remarkable how much more comfortable I felt in Tokyo relative to the first event in Mexico back in January. That I now knew most of the people on the team and had a sense for how the Whisper TV team structures its weekends made the experience much less anxiety-ridden. A television broadcast is the product of teamwork and there are so many layers of complicated planning behind the scenes that most would never be aware of. I certainly was blown away by the complexity when I made my first tentative steps into TV after spending most of my early career in radio. The Formula E broadcast is by orders of magnitude the most elaborate that I have worked on, with a host of different presenters servicing broadcasts for multiple networks globally and, in many cases, doing this live with the various channels that take the feed coming in and out throughout the broadcast. Each show is a logistical achievement of the highest order.

My little contribution to that enterprise provided a live broadcast to the CBS Sports Network cable channel and a tape-delayed version to over-the-air CBS in the US. That meant I need to continue to call the race during the commercial breaks for the live show in case something significant happened that could then be edited back into the tape-delayed program, then pausing to rejoin the live show at the end of the commercials. A huge asset in navigating that challenge and still staying on top of the race came in the form of my analyst for the weekend, none other than three-time Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti. Sharing a booth with Dario is absolutely one of my career highlights to date. The fact that he is as good in his second career as a broadcaster as he was in his first as a championship-winning driver boggles the mind but seeing his level of preparation for this job first-hand gave a glimpse into what made him so successful behind the wheel.

As you can tell if you've made it this far in the blog, the trip to Japan alone would have made for a memorable few weeks but the journey wasn't over yet. After a few more days enjoying everything Japan has to offer, it was off to Sonoma Raceway for the start of the SRO America season.

Byōdō-in, Buddhist Temple in Kyoto Prefecture

The weekend did not get off to an auspicious start. When I turned my phone back on after landing in California, I was greeted with messages about problems with the new track surface that had been installed in the offseason. Massive sections of the pavement were coming up and track activity had been cancelled for Thursday and nearly all of Friday. When I arrived at the track Friday morning, two things were clear: first, the problem was a big one, affecting roughly half of the corners on the track and second, the track and the series were absolutely committed to finding a solution to ensure the weekend was not a total write-off.

Paving crews worked all day Friday to repair the track surface and by the evening it was deemed ready for a test run. The whole paddock held its collective breath as the Toyota GR Cup cars ventured on track. Tentatively at first but soon with the vigor the series has become known for, the cars put the new tarmac to the test. It passed. On Saturday, first in practice and then into the races, scores of GT3, GT2, GT4, and touring cars took their turn. Again, the patched pavement withstood the challenge. Some small patching was done overnight ahead of the races on Sunday, all of which held up through hours of punishment. It was quite simply the most remarkable feat of crisis management I have seen first-hand in my time working in motorsports. I lack the words to properly convey the deserved praise to everyone involved for finding a workable solution to a problem that looked certain to undermine the entire weekend.

More could be said about the weekend, the state of the car counts in various series, as well as the winners and the losers of the races, but my sense leaving the track on Sunday was that everyone on site felt like they had won something by getting the races in. Instead of a black cloud of negativity, a sense of confidence pervades as the series looks ahead to the next stop on the calendar. For many, that's a trip to Sebring in early May. For GT America powered by AWS, though, it is a much anticipated return to the streets of Long Beach, which will also be the next stop on my calendar.

For now, I'll take a week or so at home to recharge the batteries after a two week stretch that saw me call ten races for six different series featuring roughly 128 cars and 168 drivers! As I said at the beginning, it's been equal parts exhausting and exhilarating and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Something to Chew On

This entry’s featured restaurant is probably the most unlikely subject for this segment yet but it provided a most memorable experience for all the right reasons. On the Friday of the Tokyo E-Prix weekend, my dad and I went out attempting to find some dinner. We were staying in the Ginza district which is replete with restaurant options but we learned that a reservation is helpful if you expect to be able to eat out in that area on a Friday night! After being turned away from a half-dozen or so promising spots, we stumbled across a small restaurant that appeared to have open seats.

When we walked in, we were greeted by an older woman with a plastic sign that, in English, read something like, “We do not speak English. If you cannot speak Japanese, we cannot serve you.” Fortunately, my dad does speak Japanese and after a few minutes of conversation with the woman with the sign, he had convinced her that his Japanese was good enough to warrant our entry into the small establishment.

In lieu of a menu, the restaurant had slips of paper hanging from the ceiling with their various options and the price. While my dad can speak Japanese, reading Japanese is another challenge entirely. Japanese uses three different alphabet systems, each with a different purpose, so knowledge of all three is required. Attempts to use Google Translate on the hand-written slips of paper proved futile, so a combination of asking the employees for recommendations and the help of a friendly table of curious Japanese businessmen was required to make the order.

We were rewarded with an incredible meal that included sashimi, fried chicken, ginger pork with vegetables, and some remarkably tasty french fries, all washed down with draft Japanese beer. It was a meal I will not soon forget. From what I can tell, the restaurant's name is Yasube and it is located in the Ginza district of Tokyo. If you are looking for a great meal, and can speak enough Japanese to gain entry, I wholeheartedly recommend it.