Sonoma Raceway marks the final NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2024 season that will air on the FOX family of networks. Given that this is the last Cup race in this TV contract, FOX was clearly in a reminiscing mood all weekend.
During NASCAR RaceDay, the main feature of the show saw Jamie Little interviewing Austin Cindric. Naturally, the topics centered around his somewhat surprising victory at World Wide Technology Raceway. That doesn’t really shock me since he hadn’t won in more than two years and didn’t seem like he was anywhere close to doing so.
My main takeaway from the piece is that the past couple of years have been rather trying for Cindric. He’s struggled on track and he had been taking it rather hard. He’s still having fun racing even if it seems like he’s had “three rookie seasons.”
One of the main topics of discussion during FOX Sports’ portion of the season has been production, or more specifically, the direction of the broadcast production. Chuck McDonald took over as head producer for FOX NASCAR at the beginning of last season. Since then, there has been a backslide in production strategies.
When he first came on, one of the things that McDonald (and by extension, FOX) insisted on was frontloading commercial breaks. That strategy backfired, unfortunately.
More recently, we’ve had issues when things happen simply because the production fails to keep up. We had another example of that in the opening laps Sunday (June 9) when Denny Hamlin blew his engine.
Our Spanish-language viewers actually have it worse.
It appears that the Spanish-language commentators are not on-site. As a result, they are completely dependent on whatever FOX Sports provides, like us at home. It’s not good, dudes.
Admittedly, I know this because of a DVR error. Even when I’m home to watch races live, I DVR the race so that I can go back and re-watch certain aspects of the broadcast for this column. In this case, I discovered Monday that I accidentally DVR’d the FOX Deportes broadcast of the race instead of the English-language broadcast. I didn’t even realize that I get FOX Deportes prior to this (I thought it was part of an international tier that I don’t subscribe to). If I actually spoke Spanish, I would be able to speak to this situation better.
It’s actually this very situation that I fear for next year. As you know, the NASCAR Xfinity Series will be exclusive to The CW in 2025. NASCAR is producing those broadcasts itself and there is a decent chance that a lot of those broadcasts will be done remotely out of the new production center in North Carolina. If you’re completely dependent on the pictures fed to you from the track, you’re only as good as your production.
If your production is lacking, then you’re in trouble. Simple as that.
Now, apparently, this had nothing to do with driver error. Larry McReynolds back in Charlotte checked into the engine issue and determined that nothing untoward happened. It just broke.
Ty Gibbs’ crash was directly attributable to the new wall added to the inside of turn 11. I don’t agree with the track and/or NASCAR’s reasoning for it. It was directly responsible for multiple incidents on Sunday.
In regards to Gibbs’ crash, FOX picked up Gibbs’ issue really late, right before he hit the wall in turn 1. It didn’t catch the true cause at all with its cameras. After a commercial break, it used the NASCAR Drive camera in Gibbs’ car to show viewers this view:
Once the wrecking was over, you had another strategy race, not dissimilar to last year’s event. The drivers who managed to go until the final laps of stage two before making their first stop were in the catbird seat here since they could go much further on their tires and fuel before making their final stop (three of the top-five finishers were in this group).
Tyler Reddick, who led the most laps Sunday, should have been there. However, he locked up his tires shortly after his first stop. I don’t recall seeing a tire lockup affect a car that much without a failure being in play. I felt that the booth did a good job explaining not only how Reddick now had a propensity to lock up more, but also how it meant that Reddick couldn’t brake as hard.
In the closing portions of the race, you had Larson with his fresher tires against Buescher and Martin Truex Jr. Clint Bowyer pointed out the importance of turns 4 and 10 on the circuit. Quite simply, they are the setup turns for the primary passing zones (turns 7 and 11) at Sonoma.
Truex effectively lost the race because he was unable to get good runs out of those turns. A slip in turn 4 allowed Larson to take the lead away for good. Granted, Truex running out of fuel would have eventually cost him the win anyway, but it does show that you have to set up your moves. I thought that FOX covered the battle for the win fairly between Bowyer and Kevin Harvick.
Post-race coverage was very brief since FOX needed to get out of Sonoma to get to the UFL playoff game between the San Antonio Brahmas and the St. Louis Battlehawks. As a result, viewers only got interviews with racewinner Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher before FOX left the track. For what was its final Cup race of the year, that’s weak.
For instance, there’s the whole incident on the final lap involving Kyle Busch and Ross Chastain. Viewers on FOX never even got a replay of that. NASCAR posted that to its YouTube page.
At the time, it seemed like there was potential for stupidity to go down after the race because of this. As far as I know, it didn’t. However, if it had happened, viewers would not have known.
In addition, FOX didn’t even interview Michael McDowell on-air. You might remember that he finished second on Sunday. That’s quite the snub. I get that you have to get to the football, but jeepers. Perhaps there was more coverage centered around the end of the FOX Cup season planned, but it got scrubbed because of all the early cautions.
Coverage-wise, this race (at least the first half) was full of shenanigans. Things calmed down in the second half of the event. The coverage struck me as being very front-centric. That’s a problem when the field spreads out. By the finish, it was nearly 50 seconds back to 20th.
There’s more fun to be seen out there. I can understand focusing on what was ultimately the battle for the win, but outside of that, there are other things that you can cover that can help bring home the fact that this was a pretty exciting race to watch.
For the future, I want FOX to work out its production issues. It needs to be more on task on the button. I’ve never been more frustrated with production than I have been this year.
Harvick had a good rookie year in the booth. Next year, it appears that the trio will be back together. That will only help. Bowyer, when he stays on task, can be good. Sunday is one example of that. Keep him on task and away from skylarking and you’ll be fine.
That’s all for this week. Next week, the NBC Sports portion of the NASCAR season gets underway with the first-ever visit for the NASCAR Cup Series to Iowa Speedway. The NASCAR Xfinity Series and ARCA Menards Series will support Cup. Meanwhile, the eyes will be on Le Mans as the 92nd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans will be this weekend. TV listings can be found here.
Next week, we’ll have a critique of NASCAR’s return to Iowa here in Couch Potato Tuesday at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will cover the Apex Grand Prix at Road America.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.