NASCAR on TV this week

Couch Potato Tuesday: NBC’s Return Not Flawless, But a Substantial Change

Mid-June in NASCAR marks a number of changes for NASCAR on TV.

The FOX Sports portion of the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series seasons is now complete, although the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will remain on FOX Sports 1 for the remainder of the year.

In place of FOX Sports is NBC Sports, back for the 10th and final year of their current deal. As you know, there is one big change this year. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is no longer with NBC Sports.

Earnhardt’s contract expired at the end of 2023.

While they did attempt to hammer out a new contract, it just wasn’t meant to be. Earlier this year, Earnhardt signed a deal that will see him work as an analyst for Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery starting in 2025. For now, he’s focusing on team ownership (via JR Motorsports), his podcast network and businesses.

See also
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Joining TNT, Amazon Broadcast Booth

For this season, it is a bit of a throwback.

At least for this past weekend, they went with the Rick Allen-Jeff Burton-Steve Letarte trio in the booth. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same lineup that NBC used from 2015-2017 before Earnhardt retired from driving.

Generally speaking, I always thought that this trio worked well together in the booth. Sunday was no different.

Likely the first thing that you noticed Sunday evening when you tuned into the USA Network was a completely different feel to the broadcast as compared to what we’ve gotten from FOX Sports over the past four months. That feel was evident on Countdown to Green.

The pre-race show was fairly brief.

It reminded me of what we’ve seen from NBC Sports with IndyCar Live, the pre-race coverage prior to NTT IndyCar Series races. Roughly 15-20 minutes of coverage prior to opening ceremonies. I would have liked to have more, but we got a couple of interviews, coverage of the big stories of the weekend, a piece on what it means for Iowa Speedway to have the NASCAR Cup Series in town and more.

There are a group of fans that are perfectly fine with what we got. It eliminated a lot of the shenanigans you often get on NASCAR RaceDay. No grid walks with silly questions. While it’s obvious that everyone is enjoying themselves, they’re serious about their work.

They also advertised special insider access for Kim Coon and Marty Snider on top of pit boxes during stage 2. That ultimately amounted to the two of them being up on Corey LaJoie and Christopher Bell’s pit boxes and getting inside information in regards to strategy. That was interesting and it has its place. There’s just one problem.

As many of you are aware, tires were the story this past weekend in Iowa. At least for the NASCAR Cup Series. Practice on Friday saw no less than three tire failures and two drivers (Bell and Austin Cindric) being forced to go to backup cars.

In the race itself, AJ Allmendinger blew a tire and smacked the wall on lap 52. There were a number of other failures during the race. What I really wanted to see was what these tires looked like early on. We never really got a good idea of it all evening.

While Coon and Snider were on the pit boxes, you had a full fuel run on tires, something that no one on Friday could have expected to see. Towards the end of that run, you saw failures for Erik Jones, Ross Chastain and Zane Smith. None of those caused cautions.

I would have wanted to know what caused those failures. We eventually got an audible update on lap 206, but never really got a shot of what those full-run tires looked like. Apparently, some of the drivers were showing cords, but I cannot say for sure.

Effectively, the tire story was underreported Sunday night, especially compared to how big of an issue that it was ahead of the race. Having Coon and Snider on the pit boxes in stage 2 may have made it more difficult to report on the issues. Having said that, they did have a third pit reporter in Dave Burns on-site. I cannot speak to whether that will be the case for the rest of the season, but I truly hope so.

Compared to the coverage that we’ve had to this point in 2024 from FOX Sports, I found NBC Sports’ coverage to be more inclusive. You saw a lot more stories than you would have gotten from FOX. It’s not just Justin Haley getting some airtime for driving his No. 51 into the top 10. It’s more coverage down through the field. You could get a better sense of when drivers were progressing up through the field.

The overall racing product at Iowa was better than expected. The fear was that the race was going to be like a number of the other short track races where it’s nearly impossible to pass. That was not the case and NBC Sports was prepared for a decent amount of action.

As for the booth itself, Allen, Burton and Letarte are in their 10th year working together, as noted previously. There’s no getting used to each other like we saw earlier this year. They already have a rapport with and complement each other well. Once again, no real shenanigans here. It’s not a task to keep everyone on task. It’s like they take things more seriously.

The race ultimately ended ahead of schedule by the better part of 20 minutes. As a result, viewers got a lot of post-race content. You got interviews with the top nine finishers, down to Daniel Suarez, along with plenty of post-race analysis. I do recognize that it’s probably not going to be like this every week since there really isn’t anything pressing on USA Network at 10:30 p.m. ET on a Sunday night that they need to get to, but it was still great to see.

See also
Thinkin' Out Loud at Iowa: No More Oval Shifting, Please

Outside of the tire issues, I found that NBC Sports’ first Cup race of the year was actually really good. There was a lot of good action to be had and they did a good job bringing that action to viewers. I don’t really need silliness in my race broadcasts. What I want is good coverage and to be properly informed about what was going on. For the most part, I got that Sunday.

Going forward, they need to keep an eye towards what’s important to cover. If that means pulling someone off of a pit box to pivot towards a different story, then you do that. The days of having four pit reporters on each broadcast so that no one has to focus on more than 11 drivers each weekend has passed. You have limited resources to work with and they need to be used in the best way possible.

That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series makes their sole trip of the season to New Hampshire for 501 miles of action. Meanwhile, IndyCar will be at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Formula 1 will be in Barcelona, IMSA at Watkins Glen and ARCA at Mid-Ohio. It’s also going to be very hot this weekend, so if you’re going to any of these races, make sure to hydrate. TV listings can be found here.

We will provide critiques of the Cup race from Loudon Sunday at bare minimum in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. In the Critic’s Annex, we’re going to talk about the FS1 coverage of Friday night’s ARCA race from Iowa and the series debut of Eric Brennan in the booth.

If you have a gripe with me, or just want to say something about my critique, feel free to post in the comments below. Even though I can’t always respond, I do read your comments. Also, if you want to “like” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, please click on the appropriate icons. If you would like to contact either of NASCAR’s media partners, click on either of the links below.

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As always, if you choose to contact a network by email, do so in a courteous manner. Network representatives are far more likely to respond to emails that ask questions politely rather than emails full of rants and vitriol.

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.

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15 Comments
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Jim

Where is the Critics Annex? Only find old articles on FS.

Daytona-520

I think I’ve only seen the promised Critics Annex like twice since the start of 2023

janice

i was surprised that jeff burton didn’t seem so screechy sunday. i actually did not have to mute the race. hopefully the olympic trials won’t push new hampshire race to a 7 pm start time. they don’t have lights up there.

anyone attending watch out…supposed to be hot and humid up there this weekend. might be able to boil and have drawn butter for that lobster in pit road.

CCColorado

Quite the difference from last week broadcast wise. More professional, no unneeded hype or a Waltrip to be found. How refreshing, really.
While it might not be the most popular opinion, I don’t miss Dale Jr. screeching, high pitched voice , as it seems to bring the same voice out of Burton. Drove me and my wife crazy last few years. Letarte does bring up things most of us regular types wouldn’t think of, so we do get good info.
Never have been , nor will ever be, a fan of super hype Rick Allen, although Leigh Diffey tops that list…UGH!
But… keep the pit reporters on pit road, not interfering with the actual race. Stupid idea, since when do we get any actual news from any of these type of things??
All in all a good start from where I was sitting.

janice

when i hear how calm burton was i knew it was because jr wasn’t there. even with letarte in the booth it i didn’t have to mute anything. it was professional. i wasn’t sure about the pit box deal, to me that would be like standing next to the wall during an active pit stop. so much could happen and you’d be in the way.

Matt

I liked the NBC coverage better than Fox. A short preview before the race is good, 15-20 minutes, sing the anthem, drop the flag. The one thing I liked was not having the constantly seeming in car or speed shots from Fox! NBC should eliminate “Thru the field” and just report on driver’s or crews throughout the race. Also, who did Blaney give the flag to???

Ted

Through the field is good to find out what some of the mid-pack cars are doing. 🤔🤷🏼‍♂️

sb

I actually appreciate the ‘thru the field’ segments. It helps keep track of where drivers other than the leaders are, and if someone is moving from the back to the front. I just wish they would slow down the ‘crawl of funning order a bit. Not always able to get down the entire list before it flips.

Echo

The little girl in the dress jumping up and down at the beginning of his interview. She was between him and the interviewer off to the right way back.

DoninAjax

Am I the only one tired of the in-car cameras of all of the Gibbs cars for lap after lap after lap?If a car is running in the 20s show someone higher in the running order. Toyota must be paying a fortune for that.

janice

isn’t ty supposedly the next “golden boy” between toyota and monster, they must throw money at that team.

Last edited 7 months ago by janice
gbvette62

The NBC broadcast was quite an upgrade from what we experienced earlier this year from Fox. Let’s just hope it continues!

I have to admit, after trying to watch the coverage of the Le Mans 24 hour on Motor Trend, I was beginning to wish Fox was broadcasting it. Now I understand the booth crew were using someone else’s feed, maybe French TV, and adding their own commentary to it, but with a 62 car field, how do you spend 85-90 percent of the broadcast showing just the top 2 or 3 cars? LMP2 got some cursory coverage but LMGT3 was pretty much completely ignored, except for an occasional quick look at the leader board.

Marc

There is still too much head-on coverage after the start and restarts. I get that three, four, five-wide makes for a nice image, but we can’t see who is passing whom from that angle.