Offseason Playbook, Part 1: Sharpening your crew’s skills.

When the dust settles and you put everything away, you think you can finally relax, right? Well, the truth is, the best racing teams do some of their most important work in the offseason. Why shouldn't safety crews be the same?

The offseason is where you build muscle memory, communication, and confidence that show up in those first five to ten seconds after something goes wrong. Remember, you don't rise to the occasion when a car gets wadded up. You fall to your basic level of training. 

The first part of the Offseason Playbook is all about sharpening your crew’s skills so you come into opening night faster, cleaner, and more consistent than last year.

Turn “We Should Train More” Into a Simple Plan

Most safety teams agree they should train more. The problem is, “we should train more” is vague, and vague plans don’t survive busy schedules, winter weather, or everyone’s day jobs.

The offseason is your chance to put structure around that idea. Instead of trying to do everything, focus on three high-impact areas:

• Classroom sessions that actually matter

• Video review that turns incidents into lessons

• Tabletop scenarios that build decision-making and communication

If you hit each of those at least once before the season starts, you’re already ahead of the game.

Classroom Sessions That Actually Matter

Classroom training doesn’t have to mean death-by-PowerPoint. The goal is to give your crew enough understanding that their actions on the wall are intentional, not just habits they picked up from somewhere else.

A few high-value topics for motorsports safety crews:

1. Fire Behavior in Race Environments

Race cars aren’t structure fires. You’re dealing with different fuels, confined spaces, and a lot of heat and energy in a very small area. Use an offseason classroom session to walk through:

• Common fuel types you see at your tracks

• How those fuels behave when they ignite

• Why certain extinguishing agents are preferred in motorsports

• How wind, banking, and track layout affect your approach to a burning car

You don’t need to turn everyone into a fire scientist, but they should understand why you choose the tactics you use.

2. Incident Case Studies From Your Own Track(s)

You have a goldmine of training material sitting in your own history. Pick a few significant incidents from last season and break them down:

• What happened?

• What did we do well?

• Where did we lose time or create extra risk?

• What would we do differently now?

Keep it light but professional. It’s okay to have frank conversations. The goal is to learn, not to point fingers.

3. Motorsports-Focused Medical Refreshers

You don’t have to run a full EMT refresher class, but you can review the basics that matter most at the track:

• Initial patient assessment in a racecar

• Common injuries in your series (neck, back, extremities, burns)

• When to slow down and protect the patient versus when to move fast

Tie everything back to your actual environment: loud, hot, dark, and often chaotic.

Using Video Review as a Training Tool

If you’re not using video as part of your training, you’re leaving a lot on the table. The offseason is the perfect time to pull footage from GoPros, track cameras, or broadcast feeds and turn them into learning opportunities.

Here’s a simple way to structure a video review night:

1. Pick 3–5 clips from your own responses or from publicly available racing incidents.

2. Watch each clip once, all the way through without stopping.

3. Watch it again, but pause at key moments and ask specific questions:

   • When the incident starts, where is the first truck?

   • How long does it take for the first person to reach the car?

   • Is anyone in a dangerous position relative to the situation?

   • How is the communication? Too much, too little, or unclear?

4. Time your response. Use a stopwatch to measure time from impact to first contact, time to fire suppression, and time to driver contact. You’re not chasing unrealistic numbers, but you should know where you are and whether you’re improving.

5. Capture one takeaway per clip. For each video, write down one concrete change you want to make. It might be as simple as “Truck A will stage here for the start of X feature” or “The second person out of the truck grabs the extinguisher every time.”

The point isn’t to critique every move. It’s to build a shared understanding of what “good” looks like and to make small, consistent improvements.

Tabletop Scenarios: Reps Without Burning Fuel

You don’t need a car, a track, or even nice weather to run valuable training. Tabletop scenarios let you rehearse decision-making and communication around a whiteboard or table.

A basic tabletop setup looks like this:

• Draw a simple map of your track: turns, infield, pit road, access points.

• Mark where your trucks and equipment normally stage.

• Present a scenario and walk through it as a group.

Example scenarios you can run in the offseason:

• Car on fire in Turn 3 with a second car upside down in Turn 4

• Multi-car pileup on the front stretch, with one car on its side pinned up against the wall

• Wreck in Turn 1 with fuel running downhill

For each scenario, ask:

• Who is the first truck to move, and where do they go?

• Who is communicating with race control?

• Who is responsible for fire, who is responsible for the driver, and who is watching for secondary hazards?

Have someone play the role of race control or EMS so your crew gets used to coordinating with outside partners. The goal is to build a mental playbook before you ever roll onto the property.

Internal Certification and Advancement

The offseason is also the best time to formalize how people grow on your team. Even if you don’t have a full pin system, you can define clear levels:

• New member / Probie

• Regular crew member / Operator

• Senior crew / Technician or Specialist

• Officer / Command

For each level, decide:

• What do they need to know?

• What do they need to be able to do under pressure?

• Who signs off that they’re ready?

Then use your classroom sessions, video reviews, and tabletop scenarios to help people move from one level to the next. When opening night comes, you want everyone to know their role and their lane.

Bringing It All Together

You don’t need a massive training budget or a dedicated facility to have a strong offseason. You need a simple plan and the discipline to follow through.

If you can:

• Run a couple of focused classroom sessions

• Spend a night reviewing video and timing your responses

• Walk through a few tabletop scenarios with your crew

• Tie it all into a basic advancement path for your people

…you’ll roll into next season more prepared than you were last year.

In Part 2 of the Offseason Playbook, we’ll look at the other side of the equation: getting your trucks, tools, and gear dialed in so equipment never becomes the weak link when the red flag flies.