SCCA. NASA. WERC. WRL. Lucky Dog. SCORE. Thirty-five years of it, and we are still out there.
Sampson Racing Communications builds racing radios, helmet kits and crew headsets. Before we did any of that, we were racers — and we still are. Every weekend our own equipment goes in our own car, and every Monday we know exactly what worked and what did not. This page is the record behind the company.
Shawn Sampson — thirty-five years, SCCA club racing to the NASA 25 Hour
I run SRC out of Ventura, California, and I drive the SoCal Rustlers cars. The list looks like this:
- Mid-1990s — started out in ProRX7 and Spec Miata
- 2004 — SCCA FP Regional Championship
- 2005 — E1 class win at the NASA 25 Hour
- NASA class championships across multiple seasons
- 2012 — appointed WERC Director, a role I held for three years
- 2016 — WERC E1 Championship
- Multiple podiums running E2 and E3 at the NASA 25 Hour with various teams over the years
- Still racing today — WRL GP1 and GTO in the SoCal Rustlers E46s and the Lucky Dog Racing League
Three years running a national endurance series is a different education from driving in one. You sit in the stewards’ room, you hear every radio complaint from every team on the grid, and you find out quickly which communication problems are real and which ones are driver error.
Troy Lindstrom — SCORE and stadium trucks to Trans-Am and GT4
Troy Lindstrom owns SoCal Rustlers Motorsports and both cars — the #180 in GP1 and the #181 in GTO. He has been racing for more than thirty years and has done nearly all of it:
- Offroad with SCORE and in stadium trucks
- NASA championships in his 700 hp NASCAR Supertruck
- 2008 — NASA SoCal Pro Truck and the NASCAR King Taco Super Trucks
- 2021 — Trans-Am TA2
- 2024 — a win and a podium in Pirelli GT4 America
- Road course endurance with SCCA, NASA, WERC, WRL and Lucky Dog
Ten years in the same car
We had both been racing in the same organisations for years without ever sharing a grid — different classes, different weekends. In 2016 we teamed up for endurance racing and have not stopped since. It started in the Supertruck at NASA WERC events up and down the West Coast. About seven years ago we added the BMW; then the truck got parked and the E46s have been the programme ever since. The car is called Eileen.
Ten years of shared results, with Mark Farmer as crew chief:
- 2025 — WRL GP1 at Eagle Canyon, Texas — P2 both days
- 2022 — won the Lucky Dog 1000 Miles of Thunderhill
- 2024 — Lucky Dog Top Dog Champion at the 1000 Miles of Thunderhill, second overall
- Second place and the Seaside Cup in the six-hour NASA Western Endurance Racing Championship round at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca
- Lucky Dog podium, second in class
- Lucky Dog endurance racing at Willow Springs, Sonoma, Thunderhill and Utah Motorsports Campus
The organizations we have raced with
Every series asks something different of a radio system. Here is what we have learned where:
- SCCA — sprint racing. Short sessions, simple car-to-pit, and no tolerance for a loose connector you did not check on the grid.
- NASA — club sprints and the NASA 25 Hour. The 25 is the hardest test a radio system gets in North America: a full day and night, driver changes in the dark, and a crew that stops being sharp somewhere around hour sixteen.
- WERC (NASA Western Endurance Racing Championship) — six-hour West Coast rounds. Long enough that battery life, helmet comfort and ear fatigue decide as much as signal does.
- WRL (World Racing League) — GP1 and GTO. Big grids, long stints, and a lot of radio traffic competing for the same airspace.
- Lucky Dog Racing League — endurance on a budget, which means mixed equipment, borrowed gear and a system that has to work with whatever the team already owns. SRC is a Lucky Dog series sponsor, and we are still out there racing it ourselves, which is the only reason we know what that paddock actually runs.
- SCORE and stadium trucks — offroad. Dust, vibration and distance. Antennas and mounting matter more here than anywhere else.
- Trans-Am TA2 and Pirelli GT4 America — pro paddocks, where the radio has to coexist with timing, data and camera transmitters in a very small car.
What thirty-five years of racing taught us about radio systems
A radio that works on a bench is not the same thing as a radio that works at hour nine. Here is what we actually get asked, and what we tell people.
5 watts or 20 watts?
Most road courses do not need 20 watts — they need a good antenna in a good place. A 5-watt handheld with the antenna mounted properly will beat a 20-watt mobile fed into a bad ground every time. Where 20 watts earns its money is big ovals, offroad, and tracks with terrain between the car and the pits. Start with the track, not the wattage. See the full range of racing radio systems →
IMSA or NASCAR helmet wiring?
This is the single most common question we get, and getting it wrong means a kit that will not plug into your car. The two standards use different connectors and different pinouts. Which one you need depends on the series and on what the rest of the car is already wired for — so before you order, check the car, not the catalogue. If you are not sure, call us and describe what is in the car now. Helmet kits and parts →
Antennas, mounting and grounding
More range problems are antenna problems than radio problems. A roof-mounted antenna with a proper ground plane will reach the far side of Thunderhill on modest power; the same radio with the antenna zip-tied inside a carbon body will not reach the end of pit lane. Offroad adds vibration, which finds every solder joint you were not careful with. Antennas and antenna parts →
Crew headsets and the pit box
Pit lane is loud, and a crew chief shouting a fuel number into a headset that does not block noise will be misheard. Over a fifteen-hour race, headset comfort and noise isolation do more for the quality of the calls than another five watts ever will. Crew and spotter headsets →
Endurance is its own problem
Sprint racing forgives a lot. Endurance racing does not. Batteries, charging between stints, spare helmet kits, a driver who has had an earpiece in for three hours, radio discipline when four people want to talk at once — these are the things that decide a long race, and they are the things we have spent ten years sorting out in our own car. Endurance racing radio systems →
Talk to someone who actually races
We are not a catalogue company that bought a racing sponsorship. We are a race team that got good enough at communications to sell it. When you call SRC, you get an answer from somebody who was at a race track recently, finding out.
Sampson Racing Communications
1756 Eastman Ave, Ste #111, Ventura, CA 93003
(805) 650-7223
Tell us what you race, what is in the car now, and what is not working. We will tell you what you actually need — including when the answer is that you do not need to buy anything.
Read the longer story behind this one — ten years sharing a race car with Troy Lindstrom →