Hundreds of people help produce IndyCar broadcast

SPEEDWAY, Ind. (WISH) — Nestled on the western edge of the 2.5 mile oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a group of white trailers.

Inside those trailers, dozens of people help beam IndyCar racing to the world. Everyone has an important role, from cueing talent, to maintaining cameras placed in the cars.

“Of the 33 cars that compete, 15 of them will have on board camera systems. Each of those 14 cars have three cameras on them,” said Senior Vice President for Penske Entertainment, Rich Feinberg.

The entire operation sets up shop at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in early May, before the GMR Grand Prix with 70 people. It ramps up to about 200 as race day approaches.

“We also have the responsibility of producing IndyCar racing for our partners globally, so we produce a world feed for every race and it’s distributed to about 40 countries around the globe, and their fans see it in their native languages,” said Feinberg.

Other responsibilities include manning the joysticks that control the trackside cameras and blending the sound of the race cars into the broadcast.

“Our goal is to not have them think about what it takes to do that, but just to enjoy the product to be entertained. To laugh, to cry to be sad to cheer, to root against whatever it happens to be,” said Feinberg.

To ensure Penske Entertainment workers can do their job uninterrupted, they travel with a generator, backup generator, and even a full service caterer.

“We have a lot of backups to our system, so outside things will not affect what our job is. We can’t control mother nature, so the weather we really aren’t able to deal with.”

The entire production crew will break everything down the night of the Indy 500 and move to the next stop on the NTT IndyCar circuit: The Detroit Grand Prix.