Contributor Colin Joyce reminisces on the auditory experience of motorsport races like the Indy 500 and NASCAR.
At the Indy 500, the cacophony begins at sunrise. When the gates open for the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” at 6 AM, the fanfare is already underway. 300,000+ fans—some of whom have been partying and camping in the immediate vicinity the whole preceding night—start to trickle their way into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, carting coolers packed with cold ones. The bustle of that many people is loud enough, but couple that with the noise of the Snake Pit—a famously hard-partying section in the track’s infield,home to a pyrotechnic-heavy EDM festival that happens simultaneously to the race itself—as well as the spectacle of military flyovers and Memorial Day patriotism, and it can be downright overwhelming. And that’s before the famous call even resounds from the track’s PA announcer: Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.
The sound that follows is enough to cause the rest of the noise to recede into the background. The screaming crowd, the explosions of fireworks, the distant dubstep drops, is nothing compared to the roar of the engines of the 33 cars on the starting grid. In 2011, at track level, each car was capable of producing a whine that hits 140 decibels, right at humans’ pain threshold for hearing. It’s the sort of vibration you feel in your chest as much as you hear with your ears—the sort of sound you don’t easily forget.
TV and radio broadcasts have captured some of the spectacle and drama of motorsports, but the audio experience is historically underappreciated. Much like going to a noise music show, or hanging around heavy machinery, it’s the sort of audio that presents a physical challenge—a frequency that’s actually tough to listen to. Doctors have long recommended fans wear hearing protection at motorsports events, but countless fans don’t—and few moments throughout the hours-long events generate as much praise as the instant the cars kick on. For me, being pulverized by the sound of the engines echoes the promise of any extremely loud environment— a reminder of my smallness. Amid the crowd and the chaos, it’s a peaceful feeling: in the noise, you can drift away.
I’m not alone in noticing just how special the sound of IndyCar, and motorsports more broadly, can be. Marshall Pruett—a former engineer and autosports team member who’s become a writer and reporter in recent years—has a series on his podcast called called “Sounds of Racing” in which he presents raw recordings of the sounds of race cars from across history. He shares the recordings mostly unadorned, with just a short intro describing the significance or uniqueness of a specific car’s sound, then allows half an hour to 90 minutes of field recordings to play.
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They’re not exactly relaxing listens, but when you get into them, they can feel comforting, in the way that a noise record can be if you fully turn yourself over to it. Most endearing is Preutt’s palpable affection for the sounds, and his love for motorsports as a whole—in his intros he’ll happily detail old memories from his time on race teams, or effusively praise his love for the murmur of a specific engine. In the recordings, you can’t fully grasp the body-shaking power of the cars, but each recording is a moving historical document. If you can’t make it in person, Pruett at least makes it clear why so many people are moved by the audio experience.
Interestingly though, there is a subset of fans who choose to interface with the sound of the race in a different way—some want to follow the events more closely. In addition to the fans who choose to wear hearing protection to—smartly—dampen the roaring of the engines, there are also some who rent or buy devices called scanners, which allow them to tune out the noise and listen in to the communications between drivers and their teams. Usually, these devices consist of programmable radios and high-quality headphones designed to dampen the noise of the track around them. They often come with lists of frequencies to tune into to hear the communications of specific teams.
While most of what occurs on these open frequencies are practical communications between a driver and their team about their car handling or race strategy, there are occasionally dramatic moments you might miss out on if you didn’t have a scanner, the sort of sports tension that makes for documentaries like Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive. It offers fans a rare peek behind the scenes of the sprawling event taking place in front of them, adding another layer to the story of their afternoon at the track, a deeper understanding, or at least the illusion thereof.
These fans stand pensively as the madness unfolds around them, amid the shirtless men screaming and spilling beers, amid the young children held aloft on their parents’ shoulders, crying as they stretch to get a better view of the proceedings, amid the whine of the engines, amid the booming stadium rock. They are focused and still, blocking out the noise of the day in favor of listening to staticky chatter about downforce and fuel mileage. It’s easy to see the appeal of that too, in the same way, some might go to an Indycar race to be overwhelmed, to be bowled over by the spectacle, some might want to block it all out—to get in their own heads and listen.
(Source)
I’m not alone in noticing just how special the sound of IndyCar, and motorsports more broadly, can be. Marshall Pruett—a former engineer and autosports team member who’s become a writer and reporter in recent years—has a series on his podcast called called “Sounds of Racing” in which he presents raw recordings of the sounds of race cars from across history. He shares the recordings mostly unadorned, with just a short intro describing the significance or uniqueness of a specific car’s sound, then allows half an hour to 90 minutes of field recordings to play.
They’re not exactly relaxing listens, but when you get into them, they can feel comforting, in the way that a noise record can be if you fully turn yourself over to it. Most endearing is Preutt’s palpable affection for the sounds, and his love for motorsports as a whole—in his intros he’ll happily detail old memories from his time on race teams, or effusively praise his love for the murmur of a specific engine. In the recordings, you can’t fully grasp the body-shaking power of the cars, but each recording is a moving historical document. If you can’t make it in person, Pruett at least makes it clear why so many people are moved by the audio experience.
Interestingly though, there is a subset of fans who choose to interface with the sound of the race in a different way—some want to follow the events more closely. In addition to the fans who choose to wear hearing protection to—smartly—dampen the roaring of the engines, there are also some who rent or buy devices called scanners, which allow them to tune out the noise and listen in to the communications between drivers and their teams. Usually, these devices consist of programmable radios and high-quality headphones designed to dampen the noise of the track around them. They often come with lists of frequencies to tune into to hear the communications of specific teams.
(Source)
While most of what occurs on these open frequencies are practical communications between a driver and their team about their car handling or race strategy, there are occasionally dramatic moments you might miss out on if you didn’t have a scanner, the sort of sports tension that makes for documentaries like Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive. It offers fans a rare peek behind the scenes of the sprawling event taking place in front of them, adding another layer to the story of their afternoon at the track, a deeper understanding, or at least the illusion thereof.
These fans stand pensively as the madness unfolds around them, amid the shirtless men screaming and spilling beers, amid the young children held aloft on their parents’ shoulders, crying as they stretch to get a better view of the proceedings, amid the whine of the engines, amid the booming stadium rock. They are focused and still, blocking out the noise of the day in favor of listening to staticky chatter about downforce and fuel mileage. It’s easy to see the appeal of that too, in the same way, some might go to an Indycar race to be overwhelmed, to be bowled over by the spectacle, some might want to block it all out—to get in their own heads and listen.
(Source)
Additional Audio Production by Spurge Carter
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