Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

ESPN technical director Bob Goosley (from left), director Richie Basile and senior producer Neil Goldberg work at their controls for a live broadcast Friday afternoon at Martinsville Speedway.

ESPN crew members produce a live television broadcast from their control room trailer at the Martinsville Speedway Friday. About 200 people from the sports network will broadcast the Sprint Cup race from Martinsville for ABC today.

MARTINSVILLE -- Millions of NASCAR fans will be in front of their TV sets today, watching the Sprint Cup race from Martinsville Speedway.

They will not only be enjoying the exploits of their favorite drivers, but also the work of about 200 people who have come to the racetrack to mount ESPN's production of the telecast for sister network ABC.

To put that number in perspective, that's about 50 more people than it takes to put on a "Monday Night Football" game for ESPN.

About 60 cameras will be used, roughly three times the number used when ESPN televises a Virginia Tech football game.

"It's eye-opening," said former NASCAR driver Dale Jarrett, a first-year ESPN analyst who will be one of the commentators for today's TUMS QuikPak 500. "Unless you have ever seen something like this, you have no idea of the manpower ... that it takes to make all of this happen.

"It's just incredible, what gets done and how hard everybody works."

Trucks have hauled in 11 mobile units, which contain everything from a control room to a studio set.

"It's technically and logistically the biggest undertaking in all of sports on a week-to-week basis," ESPN senior motorsports producer Neil Goldberg said of the network's Sprint Cup telecasts.

Traveling road show

The tractor-trailers arrived Tuesday from last weekend's race in Concord, N.C. Thirty people reported for duty Wednesday, and the rest arrived Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, workers connected power cables between each mobile unit. On Thursday, it was time to set up cameras.

Each speedway presents its own challenges.

"A football field's a football field," senior operations producer Clyde Taylor said. "But when you show up to a NASCAR track, you could be dealing with ... a track like Texas Motor Speedway, which is a pretty sophisticated track that's got all the infrastructure and everything there, as opposed to tracks that are older tracks and out a little bit further in the middle of nowhere, like this track."

ESPN producers had to deal with an annoying problem here. The infield's new 86-foot-high, 18- by 30-foot video screen blocked the view of all the cameras mounted on top of the speedway, so they won't be used much today.

"An error was made" by the speedway, Goldberg said. "It'll be corrected next year. It needs to be raised up."

In addition to handling today's ABC pre-race show and race telecast, ESPN personnel were also responsible for an ESPN2 telecast of practice Saturday.

They were also supposed to produce two ESPN2 telecasts Friday, but one was canceled when qualifying was rained out.

Practice also was rained out Friday, but the ESPN2 telecast that was supposed to be devoted to practice was not called off. With no practice to televise, Goldberg and company had to figure out how to fill a live, 90-minute show.

Goldberg didn't fret.

"Sometimes rain fill is our most entertaining product, when you get [to talk to] these drivers without their helmets on," he said.

On the air

The noon Friday telecast is about to begin.

"Ten, nine, eight ... " associate director Lynda Schulz counts down in a busy control room.

"It is a rainy day here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia," anchor Jerry Punch says on the "pit studio" set as he welcomes viewers to the broadcast.

Commentator Tim Brewer stands by on a set in the "Tech Center" trailer, ready for his segment.

"Dissolve 21. Ready 55. Take 55," director Richie Basile says in the control room, switching the picture to Brewer's set.

Drivers Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Burton are booked for interviews inside the pit studio, which at cozy Martinsville Speedway actually overlooks the racetrack instead of being near pit road as it usually is.

"Leslie, is Jeff in the studio?" Goldberg uses his headset in the control room to direct his question at a colleague in the studio before Burton's segment.

"How come I can't hear her?" he complains when he hears no reply.

Reporter Shannon Spake is over at the drivers' haulers to conduct other interviews.

She stands in front of Jeff Gordon's hauler, waiting for the driver to come out.

"I'm freezing," she says off the air as she rubs her hands together.

Race day

Spake will be one of the four reporters working from pit road during today's race, giving viewers updates on the 10 or 12 drivers she has been assigned. She will interview crew members during the race.

"The work conditions are loud," she said in a interview after Friday's telecast. "There are people running around you. There are a lot of external elements that can throw your focus off."

She prefers her NASCAR duties to her infrequent work as a sideline reporter on college football telecasts.

"There's nothing like this -- the excitement, the energy, the amount of information," she said.

Five hundred laps of racing can sometimes get boring. ESPN wants to appeal to more than just the die-hard NASCAR fan, so the race telecast will also include features on the drivers and taped sound bites from them.

To help bring fans closer to the action, there are 24 in-car cameras, which are monitored in a separate trailer. Several crew members of drivers have cameras on their helmets.

Viewers also hear the drivers' radio conversations with their crew chiefs, thanks to the trailer where the transmissions are recorded.

"We constantly want to bring new fans in," Basile said. "That's a challenge, because certain people look at it as, 'Oh, it's just cars making left turns.' It's our job to make it more than that, and to humanize the drivers and to show them more about what racing's about."

Once the race is over, it will be time to pack up and hit the road for the next race.

"When you get a broadcast on the air, you know you did your job right," Taylor said.