Helton offers glimpse of governing process
He is the only person not named France to serve as president of NASCAR, which should tell you a little something about the respect Mike Helton commands. Aside from running day-to-day operations, Helton is the commander in chief on race weekends. He's in the towers high above the tracks officiating races; he's the one who calls drivers into the NASCAR hauler if they need a talking to; and when Dale Earnhardt Sr. died, it was his job to tell the world of the loss.
After nearly 10 years on the job as president, Helton has largely become the face of the NASCAR front office, more so than even CEO Brian France.
On Friday, Helton spoke to Yahoo! Sports about his job, officiating races and what happens inside the NASCAR hauler when a driver has crossed the line:
1. Y! Sports: After Sunday's race at Talladega, we're you slapping hands with Robin Pemberton, John Darby and David Hoots?
Helton: No. Obviously, we were pleased with the results of the day, but at the finish of a race, in the control is the function of unwinding the event. There's a series of activities that we go through, and so they're pretty routine. It starts with a quick evaluation and being sure we've got everything buttoned up. In the case of Talladega, we had three green-white-checker overtime events there, so we wanted to be sure we had everything right before we left the control tower.
Obviously, we all enjoyed the race from the perspective of officiating it and thought it was a lot of activity and a lot of things going on, but it's really kind of the next morning – when you sit back and get the reflection of everybody else – that you can say that the rest of the world either agreed with your interpretation of the way the day went or they didn't agree with you. We don't jump to many quick conclusions until we get the feedback.
Y! Sports: So what did you think about it the next day?
Helton: I think it kind of coincides with the whole season – that the Cup drivers, they're driving. They are driving race cars all day long right now, and I think it was more evident at Talladega with the number of lead changes, but we were very pleased with the product.
But we look at it from both from the fans' perspective, because we're all fans of the sport, but we also look at is as the regulatory body and us being responsible for producing the product with the race cars and the race track coming together. And we were pleased with the results of Talladega.
2. Y! Sports: You watch the race from the towers above the track where you, Pemberton and Hoots essentially serve as race referees. What's going on up there?
Helton: If somebody opened the door and stuck their head in in the middle of a race, not constant but maybe just as a caution has come out, they would think: Oh my gosh, there's no way in the world these guys are under control of things.
But the truth of the matter is there's eight to 10 folks in that control tower. Their responsibilities are all divided up, and if you were to stick your head in at the peak of a moment, all eight or 10 of those people could be talking at the same time and you'd wonder how anybody can put all that together. But over time, and as it's evolved and gotten to this point, we've all been able to adapt and do that.
David Hoots is the voice of the race. All the officials – the scanners on the spotters' stand, the flag stand, the pace car, the chase trucks – they all are listening to David Hoots, and that's the voice that most fans that are scanning the event hear as the voice of NASCAR.
But John Darby, the Cup Series director; Robin Pemberton, the vice president of competition; myself and other people are sitting there, including a liaison between the control tower and the TV production trailer so that the broadcast network can be up to speed on things as things unfold. We've got a direct line of communication with them.
We've got a replay system where, every camera that's used during the event, we can access and go back and look at any time during the day from start to finish.
So you've got this hub of activity going on, but it's pretty controlled. And I think we've got it down pretty good to be able to regulate the sport and keep things moving.
3. Y! Sports: What's the most difficult part of officiating the races?
Helton: Personally, I think it comes from having to penalize or fine somebody. There's a lot of activity that NASCAR does to make the sport have credibility and confidence among the competitors. We get accused of having too many rules and regulations, and this year is evidence that we're trying to back off of those and give more back to the drivers and crew guys.
But at the end of the day, the most difficult part of it is not regulating the sport, although it's very important that we remind ourselves to do that correctly so that we have the right product on the race track. The most difficult thing is when you got to call up a team owner or driver and say: "Hey, look, this was wrong and here's what we're going to do about it."
4. Y! Sports: The multiple Green-White-Checker rule – it's a bit contrived, but they did give us an amazing finish at Talladega. As a governing body, do you guys look at a rule like that and say, "It may not be perfect, but it's better than the alternative"?
Helton: Yes. I don't know if there's a perfect answer for all the different scenarios that people may come up with and say well, "I don't know about this" or "I don't like that, but I like this part." So there's not necessarily a perfect answer.
But I certainly think that the effort behind the decision was to create a conclusion to the event that we all expect. Our anticipation is that there is a race back to the checkered flag. And from our experience in things we've seen, most recently in the past few years, our desire is to conclude the event with a race back to the checkered flag.
And so from that, early in the season – as a matter of fact, in the middle of Speedweeks – we came up with the three attempts at it that would apply everywhere across the board. There had to be some reasonableness to it so that we didn't go on forever, and so we debated between the one shot at it that we had for the past few seasons, and then what would you do different? And we landed on the three as a reasonable answer, knowing that there is no perfect answer for that in hopes that more often than not we would have a race back to the checkered flag to conclude a race.
5. Y! Sports: I'm sure you're well aware of the perception that NASCAR throws "phantom" debris cautions. What's your response to that?
Helton: I would point to two things. One, if a fan is scanning the event in the grandstand and you listen to the multiple times that someone up and down pit road, vis-à-vis their driver or the people that we have around the race track or that the race track has around the race track who are observing and looking, who are our direct eyes to the race track – they may report something and we may sort it out and it doesn't require a caution.
As I mentioned earlier, we've got a review piece of equipment in the tower where we can use to access the TV cameras to confirm or to help us see things that, while the race is going on with other camera angles, we may be able to get the guys to help us look for stuff and verify the fact that there is something in harm's way.
So there's a lot of activity that never gets a caution. And that's my first point – is that when cautions do come out, there's a lot of other activity where we've sorted out and determined that there does not need to be a caution. But when a caution does come out, it comes out for a reason, and we will err on the safe side. And if there is doubt and we cannot confirm that there doesn't need to be a caution, we will throw a caution to err on the safe side.
I use as an example sometimes the Dover race with Kasey Kahne going through 3 and 4 a few seasons ago, where we had a report of oil in the turnout there but nobody could find it visually or vis-à-vis camera. We couldn't confirm or verify that. But Kasey found it and it ended up taking him out of the race.
"So it works both ways" is, I guess, what I'm trying to say. But the truth of the matter is, is that the cautions, we believe, are correct and warranted.
6. Y! Sports: One thing I've been advocating for a while is a bigger points differential between first and second, thus incentivizing winning more. Is that something NASCAR would consider? And if not, why not?
Helton: I'd point to the fact that we've grown that over the past few seasons now to where we put more emphasis on the win. We constantly take a look at that and see if it warrants another step or not, but in today's race – and it's only been recently in the last two or three seasons – there is more points to win a race even than there was three seasons ago.
But we'll continue to look at that and see if it warrants. But the flip side of that, and what you have to be careful of is for someone – we've got a very long season, the longest season in all of sports – and if someone got on a roll, which we've seen in the past, and won several races in a period of time and if that spread between first and second was too big, then it could work against us. So we have to balance that when we make those decisions.
7. Y! Sports: Start-and-parks – what's your take on them?
Helton: My position is that the NASCAR model of business is free enterprise. If you're a car owner and you've done everything correctly and you're eligible to get an entry blank, then you should be able to participate. And once you've decided to participate and you've entered the race, then you have to meet the same criteria that everyone else meets. So every car that's in the garage area today goes through the same inspection process and has to meet the same rules and regulations.
If you do all those things correctly from our perspective, and you do it in a way that gets you in the race and if you have qualified and you have done everything to get in that race, then you deserve a shot to race. What you do with that afterwards – how long you participate – is up to the car owner.
Our deal is to be sure that everybody is treated equally and that that ability and that open opportunity to participate in the sport is protected and still is there.
The other part of that, in a lot of cases, is there are car owners that are attempting to make it in the sport, and if these opportunities to be there – to get the system up and running, learn what it means to travel around and do 36 races and go through the inspection process and prepare well enough to make the race and then hopefully attract a sponsor that gives you the opportunity to continue on – that's NASCAR. That's the way we operate. So I think those opportunities should still exist.
8. Y! Sports: From a competition standpoint, what's the biggest issue facing the Cup Series right now?
Helton: All sports are faced with a level of competition, and we're very conscious of that and we always have been. And we'll make moves and regulations to maintain a level of competition.
And I think the biggest topic for us today – in particular, in a moment of economic question – is the fact that to participate in our sport, a car owner has to invest a lot of money. So I think the current topic is doing everything we can to balance the economy between the race teams and the race fans and the race tracks and their corporate sponsors that participate in the sport.
9. Y! Sports: I just wrecked someone purposefully and am called to the NASCAR hauler after the race. What do you say to me?
Helton (laughing): We don't talk about what we say in the trailer. But it's generally a two-way conversation between – if you're called into the trailer – between you and us.
We try to tell you where we stand on things and you give us your opinion on what you're thinking, and we kind of sort it out before you leave the trailer.
There's a lot of circumstances that has to be considered when a conversation is going to be held in a hauler, and most of the conversation is trying to get to the bottom of how things happened and what their perspective on how it happened was.
9½. One things fans don't know about my job is …
Helton: It's fun. I don't know how fans perceive my role or my job, but I doubt that many of them might think that it's as fun as it is and that it's still fun.
