By the time drivers take to the streets of Long Beach this weekend for the Grand Prix, by the time Sunday’s race airs live on FOX Sports, the network’s lead producer for the IndyCar Series will already be thinking of Birmingham or Indianapolis or Detroit.

Maybe even Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

That’s Pam Miller’s job after all. She, along with her team, takes all the moving parts of producing what is an increasingly popular sport, showcases the competitions, highlights the drivers’ personalities and teams’ stories, underscores the drama.

Miller assembles the story of IndyCar. An engineer, a manufacturer and a team principal all rolled into one.

It’s fulfilling work, she said. Even if it wasn’t the original dream.

‘A stick and ball’

Miller has been passionate about sports for as long as she can remember.

A Boston Red Sox fan, Miller grew up in the northeast trading baseball cards and reciting every team’s infield. She liked writing, too, and attended Ithaca College, where she figured out how to meld her love of storytelling and sports, earning a degree in television and radio in 1986.

She landed at ESPN not long after graduation, where she worked on NFL and NHL coverage.

Until the National Hockey League decided to make some news.

ESPN lost the NHL broadcast rights to SportsChannel America in 1988. At the time, SportsChannel America offered a $51 million deal for three years, a deal that more than doubled what ESPN had paid the NHL over three seasons, the Washington Post reported then.

It was an early blow to Miller’s new career, one that could have derailed it.

But Terry Linger, her boss at the time, had an idea.

“I know what your goal is, I know what you like to do, but the reality is, at the moment that’s probably not going to happen,” Miller recalled him telling her. “But if you’ll consider going to Watkins Glen, New York, this week and seeing an auto race, maybe there’s a chance, maybe there’s a pathway, if you give it a try.”

As Miller describes it, she was more of a “stick and ball” type of sports fan.

Sure, her father had tinkered with cars here and there, but racing? Covering the world of motorsports?

She didn’t even know where the oil went in her own car.

But she got in her car anyway. And drove to The Glen.

The sport of storytelling

Miller’s covered it all during her extensive career: Formula 1 and Aryton Senna. NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt. IndyCar and Mario Andretti.

Miller has been a pit producer for NASCAR on FOX, a multitime Sports Emmy winner, since 2001. Her resume boasts producer credits for various NASCAR races and progams, including international events, for FS1 and CBS Sports’ NASCAR 50th anniversary special.

And since January, Miller has been the lead producer for FOX IndyCar.

For her, it’s all about the storytelling.

She loves learning — about people and places — and traveling and producing documentaries.

“It’s been a source of creative challenge, and I’ve learned so much,” said Miller, who is based in the Charlotte area of North Carolina. “You not only learn production leasons, but life lessons, and get to tell the stories.

“You learn something all the time,” she added, “and that’s how you progress in life.”

Producing a sport — and particularly, in the auto racing realm — comes with a host of challenges.

There is, of course, the live aspect of it all, ensuring the cameras and crew can capture every available angle of the frenetic chaos that makes a race exciting to begin with. There’s also the decisions: What are viewers being shown? Whose story is getting the most focus from viewers? And why?

But then there’s also the planning, the anticipation. Figuring out various scenarios that could unfold at any given moment during something as unpredictable as a race. A crash. A first-time podium. A weather delay.

What assets need to be at the ready, at any given moment, so the race — but really, the story — is never lost to viewers, to ensure fans at home thousands of miles away feel a bit more connected to the track?

“Whether it’s from the talent or my crew or a researcher or a trend that’s very obvious from the previous weeks or the previous years,” Miller said, “I’m taking it all, shaking it up and making it organized.

“That’s the process.”

If sport is using a honed skill to compete and entertain at the same time, then what Miller is doing should certainly qualify.

“It’s a lot of moving parts, and you’re always working ahead,” she said. “You’re always thinking a few weeks in advance so that you can have the wheels in motion of what you’re looking at down the road.”

That means, before the engines even rev, before a qualifying lap is taken, before a trophy is hoisted this weekend — Miller is already focused on the next race. Long Beach is already in the rearview mirror.

The great trade

It really didn’t take long for Miller to fall in love with auto racing.

After all, she was a sports aficionado. The career pivot was just like any player trade in professional sports.

But instead of moving teams, she switched out the ice rink for a track, a locker room for a paddock, a hockey stick for a car.

The first time Miller went to Talladega Superspeedway, in Alabama, about a year into covering motorsports, former NASCAR driver and broadcaster Benny Parsons got her right up next to the wall to watch the cars.

“It was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life ever,” Miller recalled.

Something clicked.

Then Miller went to Indianapolis.

Perched up on a wall with her camera during qualifying — “you could do that back in the day,” Miller said — she took a beat to watch. It was the early ’90s, and one of the last years that both Andretti and AJ Foyt qualified.

That was it. She was hooked.

“I was really young and just starting and learning, and I realized a little bit of the magnitude of what was happening,” Miller said. “When I got the privilege to do those things, I thought, ‘This is a pretty amazing opportunity.’”

No caution flag, no breaks

By now, Miller knows where the oil goes in her own car.

She could also probably take apart an engine and put it back together.

Like an intricate puzzle. Like a story.

“To do motorsports, it has to be a passion,” Miller said. “The schedule for each series is so long, it’s a complicated show, it’s a challenging show every week.

“You never know what adventure lies around the corner,” she added. “It doesn’t matter what form of motorsport it is, anything can pop, anything possible can happen. There’s never really a break except for a caution flag.”

Miller, in a recent episode of the Pit Pass Indy podcast, said there isn’t a day that goes by that she isn’t watching a race or brainstorming ideas of how to better tell the story of IndyCar.

“You basically, every minute that you’re awake, you’re thinking about what could make an impact, what could be better, what we could do creatively,” she said. “You’re looking at what’s been done in the past, you’re reading data, you’re reading books, you’re talking to people, you’re on the phone for hours just picking the brains of drivers and strategists and team owners.

“It’s a 24/7 immersive experience up until the green flag falls at St. Pete,” Miller added, “and then it’s probably a 60-plus hour a week immersive experience.”

It was a chance thing, Miller said of her career in motorsports — but it happened because she kept an open mind.

“Every week, I’m proud,” Miller said. “I’m proud of our crew, I’m proud of the show, I’m proud of evolving. I’m proud of the friendships and the enduring friendships.

“It’s more than just doing a TV show. It’s a passion.”