Live From the Indy 500: FOX's Motor Sports Engineering Team Is Ready To Shine Collaboration with IMS Productions leads to innovations like increased drone use By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Friday, May 23, 2025 - 11:16 am
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FOX Sports Field Technical Producer George Grill has plenty of experience covering NASCAR racing. This year, he has been learning the world of the Indy Car Series and, this weekend, gets to tick off another career highlight: working on an Indy 500.
I've been here for the Brickyard 400 when I was part of NASCAR, he says. We would draw around 130,000 fans. But this place holds 350,000 people, and it's sold out. Once the crowds come in, I'll get a sense of what this place is really about.
FOX Sports' George Grill: Our coverage now is a full-blown FOX show, but IMS had 34 years of culture and experience, and we've been working together to see what we can improve on.
Grill and FOX Sports, Director, Remote Engineering, Matt Battaglia have been at the center of the Indy Car Series, especially when it comes to interfacing with the IMS Productions team, which has its own contingent of production trucks and personnel.
Our coverage now is a full-blown FOX show, like a NASCAR show, Grill says. But IMS had 34 years of culture and experience, and we've been working together to see what we can improve on. We've been gaining trust in each other. We're in this together as one, and we're blending with IMS.
Because IMS Productions is owned by Penske Entertainment, which also owns the Indy Car Series (and the track), Grill says, its team is open to innovations, such as bringing in Beverly Hills Aerials for drone coverage. We have a drone at 11 of the 16 races we have, he adds, and IMS have been receptive to our trying to showcase the drone so it can showcase Indy Car.
Under the green flag, the drone will be able to fly over the edge of the track, with the exception of Pit Lane because there is no buffer between Pit Lane and the track. Under yellow flags, however, the drone can fly over pit lane during pit stops. We can basically fly from pit-out and then all around the track until we hit pit-in, he explains. Then we can get scenic over the golf course inside the track and those sorts of things. We'll have two drones: one that works the front stretch, the main assignment, and the other one working in the back.
One request with respect to safety? Keep the drones out of the line of sight of drivers, who are driving at 230 mph and might perceive a drone in the air as a piece of debris. You'd be surprised, Grill says, how much the drivers notice when they are driving at 230 mph.
The biggest challenge of the race, he says, is helping viewers at home get a sense of how fast the cars are moving. He explains how the team meets the challenge: First, we have a few more locked-off shots that let the cars come through the glass, which provides a better sense of speed. We've also installed a small Dream Chip mini camera with a 150-degree lens on it inside an old timing hold on the start/finish line that used to be used for stop-photo timing. That camera will look all the way down the track to Turn 4, with the yard of bricks right in front of the lens. When the cars pass over that camera you definitely get a sense of the speed.
FOX is deploying more pit-box cameras than it uses on a NASCAR race. On NASCAR, we use only one. Here, we'll have at last five, possibly six, Grill says, noting, The pit stops are very different here than in NASCAR.
Among the technical highlights for Grill is the move to HDR along with the HUD graphics, which have been developed with SMT, and dual microphones on each car. Helping facilitate the HDR show are multiple 10-Gig circuits from AT&T and Lumen that will get everything back to our facility in Los Angeles. With the dual mics, having one on each side of the car will make the audio much better when a car is passing on the left or the right. You'll be able to hear the pass as well as see it.
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Live From the Indy 500: FOX's Motor Sports Engineering Team Is Ready To Shine Collaboration with IMS Productions leads to innovations like increased drone use By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
