Pocono Raceway is something of an outlier in the NASCAR Cup Series. The field gets spread out and pit strategy plays a big role. A lot of people don’t like that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that a race there isn’t enjoyable to watch.
Compared to last year, this race was a little staid. According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, there were 1209 fewer passes under green this year as compared to last year, despite there being 10 more laps under green. There were also only eight lead changes, which is an all-time low for a Cup race at Pocono. That includes rain-shortened events and the doubleheader weekends.
Why was this so? There never really was an explanation about the reasons why, but from what I saw, clean air was very important. Every time someone got the lead, they were able to pull out to a decent advantage in a hurry. Of the eight lead changes, four came from drivers staying out during rounds of stops under yellow. The only change that came outside of the first lap after a restart was when Denny Hamlin took the lead from Josh Berry on lap 67.
With not a whole lot of action at the front of the field, NBC Sports had to find other ways to make this race exciting once it got away from the immediate time around restarts. In this case, the strategy more or less replaced the good action on the track that viewers crave.
If you’re doing that, you have to make sure you have your facts straight. Early on in the race, Steve Letarte seemingly screwed up the laps and thought that there was an extra lap in the stage. That influenced his commentary for multiple laps. It was only on the final lap of the stage that he realized his mistake.
The caution for Todd Gilliland’s brake failure/wall contact set up the race to be won on fuel mileage. Had it run to the finish from lap 121, it may have been much more interesting to watch and the broadcast booth would’ve had more to do.
Racing-wise, a race with a dearth of action at the front of the field means that you have to search a bit more to find some good action. Early in the race, NBC Sports did a decent job at it. There was some good action to be had on Sunday (July 14) and viewers saw some of that. At the same time, it was rather difficult to pass.
On the 23-lap run to the finish, most of the coverage was centered around Hamlin trying to run down Ryan Blaney. The problem is, the two of them were nearly equal on pace. So, viewers saw a lot of single cars running around by themselves.
Daniel Hemric got himself into trouble in the closing laps. Apparently, he hit the wall somewhere and broke a toe link, but I’m not sure where he did it. We only saw him on the cool down lane on the inside of turn 3 with a wobblily right rear wheel.
Sunday’s race will probably be best remembered for the incident on lap 121 that was triggered by contact between Kyle Busch and Corey LaJoie.
Generally speaking, this wreck was the result of blocking. Busch blocked a move from LaJoie, then blocked a second time. In a post-race interview, LaJoie compared the incident to the one he had with Jimmie Johnson at Kansas Speedway where he spun out Johnson.
As for Busch, he did interviews with NBC Sports and the assembled media outside of the infield care center (which is basically next door to the media center at Pocono) and said a bunch of nothing. Without any kind of real detail from Busch, no one was able to figure out if the crash just happened in the moment, or if something else was in play.
Based on the LaJoie interview, he seems to think that it was just in the moment. This is a situation where the production staff can help the situation by combing through the footage it has (stuff that made air and stuff that didn’t) to find additional footage. The extra footage we got included the NASCAR Drive camera from LaJoie’s car, but not a whole lot else.
Later in the race, Ty Gibbs had an engine failure on a restart. The result of that failure was that a mixture of oil and water came out of Gibbs’ exhaust pipes. Never a good thing.
The booth referred to the mixture as looking like Yoo-Hoo. I thought it was a little too light in color for that to be so, but it is an apt comparison. It is also a much different way for it to come out as opposed to what we used to see. In the mid-2000s, this situation would result in a slurry-like substance spraying out of the radiator overflow.
Joe Gibbs Racing explained this situation a little bit more after the race on its Instagram page. Not every day is an emulsion mentioned in regards to a racecar.
Something that didn’t get a lot of coverage on the broadcast was the tires. During the third caution of the race, there was a shot of cords showing on a tire off of Erik Jones’ car. Naturally, that would be something to look out for, but there weren’t really many tire issues on the day. Brake issues were a bigger issue. While it wasn’t mentioned much on the broadcast, it poured in Pocono a few hours before the race. That likely washed a lot of the rubber off of the track.
Post-race coverage was pretty typical for Pocono. Viewers got interviews with the top-five finishers and a check of the points.
Overall, this race wasn’t particularly exciting to watch. Yes, there were some shenanigans that went on, but there wasn’t a lot of action shown. Whoever snatched the lead exiting turn 1 would just drive away. Once you got more than a couple of laps away from a restart, everyone settled in and movement was tough to come by.
That is a hard race to cover, but it’s better that it happened during the NBC Sports portion of the season than the FOX Sports section. To improve this broadcast, NBC Sports needed to be more inclusive in the battles that it chose to cover. It can’t be all about the leaders in a race like this because if you go that route and the action at the front is a dud, you’ve got nothing.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is a busy weekend. Cup and the NASCAR Xfinity Series return to the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the ARCA Menards Series will share the bill at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park eight miles away. The NTT IndyCar Series will be in Toronto, Formula 1 in Hungary and SRO America will be at VIRginia International Raceway. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of the Brickyard 400 broadcast and more in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will cover Explore The Pocono Mountains 225.
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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.