For NBC, Sunday (July 21) afternoon should have been one of the biggest days of the year for its NASCAR coverage.
The NASCAR Cup Series was back on the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Even in the leanest years, the Brickyard 400 could be counted on to be a decent ratings getter.
Going in, you would have thought that there would have been more pre-race coverage. However, only about 16 minutes were allotted on Countdown to Green prior to the opening ceremonies.
If you don’t have cable, you couldn’t have seen most of the pre-race coverage because NBC broke into programming with news of President Joe Biden deciding to drop out of the presidential race. For the sake of this column, I’ll state this upfront. Frontstretch is not a political website. We’re not here to give political opinions on why Biden made his decision. We’re here to cover motorsports. As a result, we will stick to the facts of the matter.
The special report on NBC cut into Countdown to Green two minutes into the broadcast. The broadcast ended up being sent over to USA Network while NBC News covered the news. I checked to see if there was any notice given of the move ahead of time, but there was none.
Should Countdown to Green have been moved to USA Network? Given the nature of the breaking news, yes, I think so. That kind of situation doesn’t happen every day and there was a public interest in the story that is significantly greater than the Brickyard 400. My issue here was that there was no notice given as to where the NASCAR coverage was going. I just guessed in real time that NBC would put it on USA Network and it did.
The report was relatively short and the coverage was back on NBC before the green flag. The first segment of the race was simulcast on both NBC and USA Network before it went back exclusive to NBC after the first commercial break of the race.
Racing-wise, it is very difficult to compare Sunday’s race to the previous races on the oval. The last two Cup races on the oval were with the high-drag configuration of the Gen 6 car. My memories of the 2020 race involve a couple of guys driving off to a huge lead and Bubba Wallace gaining six positions in a commercial break (10th to fourth) and it not being acknowledged.
NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that there were more than 19 passes per lap Sunday. That is a higher number of passes per lap than the previous five Brickyard 400s. Lead changes (18) were the most since 2013. Disregard the all-time record of 26 because that happened in 2008 and most of us remember that travesty.
Based on raw data, this wasn’t a terrible race. It was more or less in line with what the booth said during practice on Friday. It would be a closer, more competitive race than 2020, which it was.
Yes, there was a lot of single-file racing. I’m not shocked about that. The booth described it as similar to a bike race. However, I think the announcers might not be all that well-versed in professional cycling as they described the lead pack as a “peloton.” I’ve watched way too much of the Tour de France over the past 30 years. A peloton is a big pack. What you had at that point of the race was a breakaway.
Pit strategy was huge, especially in what was supposed to be the final quarter of the race. Kyle Larson had the clear fuel advantage but had to restart out of the top 20. Viewers saw how he drove his way back up to the front. NBC did very well in explaining the various strategies. I’m still wondering if Brad Keselowski could have made it to the end had the caution for Kyle Busch’s wreck not happened, though.
The mess on the restart immediately before the big wreck is something that will be talked about for a while. NASCAR wasn’t really in a position to call it off when Keselowski pitted, but I just don’t think it could have done anything differently.
Meanwhile, Ryan Blaney was angry because Keselowski’s move to pit on the restart screwed up his strategy and cost him the race. NBC covered this situation pretty well, but the takeaway here is that I’m not really sure what else could have been done other than NASCAR waving off the entire restart and allowing everyone to re-choose. Heck, if it did that, it might have happened again.
My main gripe about the coverage is that given the small-pack nature of the race, NBC could have shown more of the individual packs rather than sticking to the front pack of four to seven cars.
There was a very noticeable technical issue late in the race Sunday. With nine laps to go, the feed literally went black. I have no idea what happened and I know I’m not the only one that had this issue as a number of my colleagues did as well. Thankfully, it was a brief issue but it wasn’t acknowledged on-air.
What I was a little more confused about was the decision to jettison the finish of the race to USA Network. The broadcast actually did the switch a couple of minutes early since the scheduled 6 p.m. ET sign-off time was reached during the red flag after the John Hunter Nemechek–Denny Hamlin–Daniel Hemric wreck.
At least here on the East Coast, 6 p.m. ET wasn’t scheduled to be anything special. It was literally the local news. Yes, it would have covered Biden’s decision as the top story. NBC didn’t indicate that this was going to be another network news program, though. I figured it would have done that after the local news with its normal 6:30 p.m. ET edition of the NBC Nightly News.
The decision to move the conclusion of the race to USA Network created another issue. The streaming for the race at NBCSports.com and on the NBC Sports App ended at 6 p.m. ET. Both the website and the app stream nearly every non-Peacock sporting event that NBC Sports airs on TV (and some that don’t). However, that streaming Sunday was tied into NBC. When the race left NBC, that was it for streaming there on Sunday.
To watch the end of the race Sunday, you had to have access to USA Network, either via cable, satellite, or one of the internet-based services such as Hulu Plus, YouTube TV or Fubo. By today’s standards, that’s rough.
It also led to a discussion about the current TV deal on our Slack channel. NBC Sports is currently limited to putting a maximum of four Cup races a year on a premium streaming service via simulcast (in this case, Peacock). It chose not to make the Brickyard 400 one of those four races, which is honestly a head scratcher to me. To this point, NBC has aired one of those (Chicago). The new deal starting next year more than likely will not have the four-race stipulation.
It is the legacy of a TV deal that was signed back in 2013 with NBC Sports. Given the amount of change since then, it might as well have been 1986 and the executives had ALF on a TV in the background while consummating the deal.
When the deal was announced, most of the streaming services that we know about today did not exist. Yes, Netflix and Hulu were around back then, but most of the others were not. Peacock, NBCUniversal’s premium streaming service, didn’t launch until April 2020 and was exclusive to Comcast Xfinity subscribers until July.
The race getting moved to USA Network resulted in viewers getting more post-race coverage than they would have otherwise. Viewers got a few post-race interviews and a bunch of post-race analysis before leaving Indianapolis for yet another episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
Overall, Sunday’s race fell victim to historic news. NASCAR can’t control that. Even the biggest race pales in comparison. The antiquated terms of the current TV deal stymied a lot of fans from being able to watch the end of the race, which stinks.
That’s all for this week.
With Indianapolis complete, we are now in the summer break. I’ll spare you my thoughts on whether this break should exist. All three of NASCAR’s national-level series and IndyCar are off until after the Olympics. The biggest show in motorsports this weekend is the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Belgium from the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. The ARCA Menards Series will also be in action at Salem Speedway. TV listings can be found here.
Next week’s column is undecided at the moment. I could choose to critique either one of the two races, or I could look into the potential on-air lineups for the first year of NASCAR’s new TV deals.
The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will take a look at Sunday’s Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto for the NTT IndyCar Series, which aired exclusively on Peacock. As you likely heard, some interesting things happened there.
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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.