At Michigan International Speedway, anything can happen.
That includes weather. The whole weekend was a nightmare with rain causing delays all three days. That includes the FireKeepers Casino 400, which was delayed to Monday (Aug. 19) after 51 laps.
For whatever reason Sunday, NASCAR chose not to move the start of the race up much, if at all. As a result, the rains showed up for the first time during the pace laps. That in turn led to a two-hour break.
During that time, viewers got a series of interviews with crew chiefs and drivers. Eventually, USA cut to last week’s Cook Out 400 from Richmond Raceway, which had some enhancements. A chyron was added to indicate that Austin Dillon had lost the use of his winning privileges in regards to the playoffs. They also bleeped Joey Logano’s interview. Viewers got periodic updates from the track as well.
Speaking of Dillon, the whole mess surrounding Richmond took center stage during Countdown to Green. That didn’t necessarily surprise me since it was just about the only thing being discussed in NASCAR over the past week. The penalties were described and Dillon got some on-air time to discuss his thoughts.
Of course, knowing that Richard Childress Racing has appealed the suspensions and will present its case Wednesday, things could be quite different once we get to Daytona.
Given the small amount of time that they get for pre-race programming these days, I didn’t really want them to spend much time on the Dillon mess Sunday. If they did that, they wouldn’t have had much time to actually preview the race.
It was a similar setup during the red flag on lap 51. We got a few interviews before everyone bunkered down in their motorcoaches. It was 6:10 p.m. ET when the race was postponed to Monday. I was fine with the coverage that we got here. Just wish the race started earlier so that we didn’t have to deal with this for the second year in a row.
When USA’s broadcast started at 11 a.m. ET Monday, the cars were already on the track. They barely had time to introduce themselves before talking about what Denny Hamlin’s crew had to do to fix the undercarriage of his car after his spin into the grass Sunday.
Monday’s broadcast seemed to be filled with bad luck. Two of the three biggest stories of the race occurred during Non-Stop commercial breaks.
The second issue will end up being the moment for which this race will be best remembered. On lap 138, Corey LaJoie had an outright blow-over on the backstretch.
This was an alarming crash in that seemingly all of the equipment that NASCAR has mandated to be on the Next Gen car (side window, roof flaps, hood flaps, vertical fin, diffuser flap, etc.) did absolutely nothing to keep LaJoie on the ground.
The booth was absolutely in agreement here. The closest facsimile to this crash that I can think of at Michigan was when Johnny Benson flipped in his debut in what is now the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 1993.
That said, the only similarity between this crash and LaJoie is the fact that just simple contact caused the spin that led to the flip. The other two had alternate causes. Elliott Sadler had a blown tire in 2000 that let extra air in, while Kyle Sieg’s car on Saturday was getting pushed by Chandler Smith.
NBC Sports aired a virtual cutaway car segment that explained what was supposed to happen in this kind of a crash, but which clearly did not. I feel like the wind played a bigger role here than the broadcast indicated. How much, I’m not sure. Despite that, I felt that they did a decent job covering it.
The other instance was the series of tire failures that occurred just after halfway for Logano, Todd Gilliland and AJ Allmendinger. I have no idea what caused them.
There were indications that there could have been debris on track that caused it. That would make sense with three failures in about a lap. Then, there was discussion about potential cording issues on the rear tires during Sunday’s portion of the race.
I was hearing this live on Monday and thought to myself, “What?” Why was I only hearing about this now? Shouldn’t that have been indicated during the red flag interviews Sunday? If that were a thing on Monday, why didn’t we have one of the pit reporters go to one of the teams in the pits and show that?”
If it was debris that caused the failures, NBC Sports didn’t find it. We saw footage from the NASCAR Drive camera in Logano’s car that showed what he did when his tire went down, but you couldn’t see anything.
Overall, this was a real downer. I was unhappy that we could never get the actual cause of what was happening. The fact that this happened during a break only made it worse, even though it was outside of the booth’s control.
Racing-wise, the race had quite a bit of action. I think a lot of viewers might think that it was thin at times, but it was more competitive than last year. According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, there were 435 more passes under green than last year. Monday’s race had eight more laps under green due to the extra time tacked on, but still had more passes per lap.
At times, the action was fast and furious, and NBC Sports did a good job bringing that action. The cautions towards the middle of the race resulted in alternate strategies coming into play. Viewers had a very good idea of what to expect from the various moves being made.
Post-race coverage was pretty decent. Viewers got interviews with the top-eight finishers, which I liked to see. Then again, when you’re airing a race on a channel that seems to schedule regular Law and Order: Special Victims Unit marathons, you can work with it pretty easily.
I have no idea how long this race was scheduled to run on USA Monday. Spectrum literally only scheduled the broadcast for a half-hour, which I knew was ridiculous. Adding two hours to that got the whole thing on my DVR, but I don’t know what their plan was.
Also of note, Monday’s broadcast was the final Cup Series broadcast for Rick Allen as a play-by-play commentator. Starting this weekend in Daytona, Leigh Diffey will take over in the booth. Allen has been in his current role since 2015 and set a tone for the broadcasts. Back in 2018, I sat down with Allen and he discussed this.
We were thinking that there would be some kind of acknowledgment that this was Allen’s final Cup broadcast (for now) on air. Unless I’m missing something, there was bupkis. Seemed kind of weird to me.
Then again, it’s not like Allen’s leaving the network tomorrow. He still has four more NASCAR Xfinity Series broadcasts that will air on USA through Watkins Glen. The eight broadcasts on The CW that will end the season will also be NBC Sports broadcasts. Now, if nothing happened after that to thank Allen for his work over the past 10 seasons, that would be suspect.
Overall, there was some good racing to be had Sunday and Monday in Michigan. NBC Sports did a decent job bringing that action to viewers. However, they were lacking at a couple of key moments Monday. It was partially due to the Non-Stop commercial breaks, but also due to not doing due diligence. With the playoffs coming, they have to get that right. Daytona this weekend is an easy place to get back on track before the Southern 500.
That’s all for this week. This weekend, we have a split setup in play. The NASCAR Cup Series will be in Daytona along with the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Saturday night’s broadcast will mark Diffey’s first Cup race in the broadcast booth since 2017.
Meanwhile, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series playoffs will start at The Milwaukee Mile on Sunday. A combination race for the ARCA Menards Series and ARCA Menards Series East will support it. IndyCar will be at Portland International Raceway this weekend, while Formula 1 returns from its Summer Break with a trip to Max Verstappen’s home track, Circuit Zandvoort. TV listings can be found here.
We’ll have a critique of the Coke Zero Sugar 400 from Daytona in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. We’ll have some thoughts on Diffey’s return, in addition to other aspects of the broadcast.
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About the author
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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didn’t see the race on monday. all i can say is nascar is lucky that cory walked away from that wreck. frightening. they better focus on these cars getting airborne.
Still frightening but at least he wasn’t flipping the whole time. That’s when it gets scary. Sliding on the roof is certainly the better result.
LaJoie’s blowover looked almost exactly like Ryan Preece’s blowover at Daytona last year that NBC showed. Except LaJoie’s car didn’t roll over as many times, thankfully.
Might have to watch the next bunch of races on mute. If Diffey is the same guy that screams about a pass on Lap 3 during Indy Car races, I’m watching the next few races on mute. His excitement factor is way overdone. Some people like that however I do not.
Its funny how every race that gets delayed or shortened by rain, everyone wishes that it started earlier. And usually if that would have happened, they would have gotten most or all of the race in before the rain started.
Apparently the only ones that haven’t gotten that memo is Nascar and the networks. A pipe dream I’m sure, but I wish Nascar had put a stipulation in their new tv contract that day races are to start at 1pm local time. Like I said, wishful thinking