It was back in late 2010 that, with permission, finally, for Michelle to take unpaid leave in the middle of term, we booked our tickets to Florida.

It was a very exciting time, as we’d been given an opportunity to go to Florida, and more specifically, to Daytona, to marshal, or, as it’s called in the USA, be a corner worker at, the 2011 Rolex24.

There are a few differences in the job between the UK and USA, however, at the end of the day, you’re there for the same reason: safety.

In the UK, a marshal will typically be allocated a specific job, and indeed, this will be based on their usual grade; so you may be a flag marshal, incident marshal, incident officer, post chief, etc. In the USA, you’d be allocated to a turn and then on a rota, you’d do all the jobs: Safety, Flag & Communicator. Of course, like the UK, there’s no pressure to do a job you’re uncomfortable with, but everyone is encouraged to have a go.

The Safety job is much the same as our incident marshal, although you do not go trackside without permission. At all. In many cases, EV (Emergency Vehicles) will respond trackside before you do, making the safety job more about observing and reporting back to the corner captain. That’s not to say that you don’t respond when needed!

The Flag job is exactly the same as in the UK; typically a team of two, one standing ready with yellow, back to the traffic, and one, as their ‘eyes’ and safety, standing ready with blue. The blue flag has a yellow stripe across it’s diagonal, the purpose of which appears to be to make the flag more visible at night. “Black all around” is the equivalent of our red flags, where cars are expected to return at a safe speed to pit/paddock, and red flags are very rare: they mean stop safely right there. “Double yella all around” signifies safety car. At least for Rolex, there were no red or green flags used.

Communicator is very much the same as the role of a Post Chief, but without the report pad: they are the communicator between the turn (post), and race control. All radio calls start with an announcement of the calling station, and the current flag status, before clearing the channel and waiting for race control to give you the go-ahead to talk further. Reports are then short, clear, concise, with the car number and colour (aids other turns spotting a car approaching) and briefly what happened. Race control will always ask for more detail if they require it.

I noted that black flagging a single car was aided by calling the car around to the black flag post, who would have the number and flag ready. Additionally, all manner of details about a car can be communicated among team members without radio or voice, using hand signals and gestures. Generally in the UK, we can communicate what kind of tow is required, but in the USA they can give colour and number as well.

It’s very unusual to see corner workers without either a radio or scanner, listening in, but the discipline to not act unless the communicator and/or corner captain says so, is high.

We worked the first 4 hour shift from 3.30pm until 7.30pm, and then went for a walk around and some food. In passing, it’s worth pointing out that throughout the 24 hours, the corner worker compound was constantly manned and stocked with hot food, and drink, and all free for corner workers. That’s certainly something that’d be welcome in the UK!. We walked the whole track, pretty much, as well as the pit lane and paddock. Our corner worker passes were ‘go everywhere’ passes, and as our first Rolex24 experience, we made full use of them. After our 8 hours down time, it was time for another 4 hour shift, and so at 3.30am, we were back on duty. You don’t associate cold with Florida, but boy, it was. In the day, we’d been warm with our white T shirts and jeans on, however, in the early hours of the morning, we had as many layers as we had with us on. The fog came down, and the bulk of our shift was spent “double yella all around’. The safety car was out for so long, they had to put the spare out while the first went to refuel!

After our second shift we were, in theory, done. However, as we’d not done a 24 hour race before, and certainly hadn’t done Daytona before, we enjoyed the time walking around and seeing the sights, and to see the end of the race.

We’d like to thank all those that made it possible for us to go, and all those new friends we made for making us feel so welcome.

Tags: Corner Worker,Daytona,Marshal,Marshalling,Motorsport,Rolex24
Categories: Motorsport
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