Daytona International Speedway in the middle of the summer is always going to be a big deal in NASCAR. While the race isn’t on the Fourth of July weekend, or the final race of the regular season anymore, it is still a race that people eagerly anticipate.
TV-wise, it was a race to look forward to even more than normal. On Tuesday, NBC Sports officially announced something everyone had known for weeks: Leigh Diffey would be taking over in the broadcast booth for Rick Allen.
Diffey brings a different attitude to the broadcast booth than Allen does. You never have to worry about whether he’s enthusiastic about what he’s covering. He will be. The call of the finish from Saturday (Aug. 24) night proves that.
What was Jeff Burton doing during this sequence? He was clearly jacked up.
Clearly, he spent a lot of time preparing for this race, likely more than you’d see with many other on-air commentators. This level of preparation is possible every week from everyone. In 2018, Jeff Burton showed me some of the statistical sheets that they get before each event.
He’s also had to build up a decent amount of communication with the drivers. Remember that Diffey hadn’t called a Cup race prior to Saturday night since 2017. Only 15 of the 39 drivers who competed in the last race he called were even in the race Saturday night. The others have either cut back to part-time, retired or simply been forced out of the sport for any number of reasons.
Diffey also worked pretty well with Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte. They were his boothmates the last time he worked a Cup race.
Diffey fit right into the broadcast. It was like he’d been there for years. Then again, at this point, he’s been calling races for more than 20 years, so it really shouldn’t be that surprising that he was good. He also seemed sharper in the booth than Allen. You didn’t see him making mistakes, which seem to happen regularly.
Now, I should state that Daytona is Daytona. A drafting race is generally one of the easier races to call. Saturday night in Darlington will be a different story.
The big story entering Saturday night was the aerodynamic tendencies of the Next Gen car following Corey LaJoie’s blowover at Michigan International Speedway. NASCAR mandated an additional vertical fin on the right side of the rear window to help prevent that. At the time, it didn’t really give any idea what it was going to look like. I don’t think the fin affected the racing in any way Saturday night.
However, it entered the conversation multiple times Saturday night. First up was Michael McDowell getting wiped out on lap 152 in turn 1.
This was a scary crash to watch. Yes, McDowell got airborne, but I was way more nervous about McDowell getting t-boned right in the driver’s door by Joey Logano. It says a lot that he basically walked away from that hit. Everything else didn’t look like all that much of a hit, including the shot from hitting Alex Bowman in the C-pillar.
Afterward, there was a significant amount of coverage about how the changes made to the Next Gen (specifically the new fin) helped to keep McDowell from rolling over here. The thought was that the crash could have been a repeat of Ricky Craven’s infamous crash into the catchfence at Talladega Superspeedway in 1996.
Craven’s car from that infamous crash hangs out at the International Motorsports Hall of Fame outside of Talladega these days. Had McDowell’s car ended up barrel rolling, it might have joined Craven’s car there. Instead, it just might race again after substantial repairs.
Then, pretty much everything that had been said barely 10-15 minutes earlier was repudiated by Josh Berry’s blowover on the backstretch on lap 159.
Berry’s incident is more like a number of flips that we’ve seen in recent years. He took another hit after he spun, and that just broke the seal. It was over from there. Afterward, the thought from the booth was that “it’s back to the drawing board.” I’m not surprised.
The other major story is that NBC promised that viewers could see every lap under green during the race through Nonstop commercial breaks. On paper, it sounded like a great idea. I was a little worried about how it would look in practice.
First off, there are local commercial breaks that must run during broadcasts once an hour. I was questioning where those would fit in on such a broadcast. Turns out that my worries were unfounded there as they ran during cautions. In races with longer stages, such a setup could become an issue if a stage runs under green for more than an hour.
I also thought there could be more breaks to satisfy the sponsors that would be unhappy with losing their full-screen ads. That didn’t seem to be the case.
The number of commercial breaks under green is something that I always keep track of, regardless of the race. I found that the race had one fewer green-flag commercial break than it had last year. In addition, the break lengths were just about identical to last year as well. Most were 165 seconds (two minutes, 45 seconds) long, with one exception that was a little shorter.
The linked press release described NASCAR Nonstop as a “production enhancement,” giving the radio-style broadcasts as another example. I wouldn’t necessarily put this in the same boat as the radio-style broadcasts simply because it wasn’t that big of a change for the broadcast in general. The booth went about their jobs like it was a normal race. You just didn’t have full-screen ads under green.
That said, was this setup a success? I believe so. This was an action-packed race Saturday night and viewers really didn’t miss anything. That is exactly what NBC wanted to get out of it.
Much like last Monday in Michigan, a lot of chaos broke out during one of the breaks. Viewers were able to get an idea of everything that was going on. However, much like at Michigan, NBC was unable to figure out the root cause for the tire failures. Perhaps debris was there and caused the tire failures for Erik Jones and Martin Truex Jr., along with Shane van Gisbergen’s catastrophic engine failure. They still need to work on that.
Post-race coverage was a bit odd. There were roughly 28 minutes of post-race coverage, but not a lot of interviews in that time. A lot of the coverage was dedicated to the ambiance of Harrison Burton’s win, Jeff Burton’s celebration with Harrison and more. That is a choice.
I get it. The win is a big deal for Harrison. It really is. I couldn’t tell you where in the world he’s going to end up next year. The best rides in the NASCAR Xfinity Series that were seemingly open for next year have filled up in the past 10 days.
That said, NBC does have a duty to be neutral. Granted, it’s hard to be neutral when your son is involved. NASCAR seems to like that kind of thing in the sport, the best example being Ned Jarrett calling his son Dale home to his first Daytona 500 victory in 1993. It would be frowned upon in other sports. It should be noted that Ned later apologized to Dale Earnhardt for his commentary that day; Earnhardt was cool with it.
Daytona was one of the four races this year that were simulcast on NBC and Peacock. The red flag due to Berry’s flip led to the race running long. Reportedly, viewers who were watching on Peacock had the broadcast end on them right before the final restart. If that’s so, that’s terrible. Viewers deserve to see the whole race that’s scheduled.
As of this writing, the whole broadcast is available on replay on Peacock, but we’ve had these issues this season with NBCSports.com. It needs to be fixed going forward.
Overall, I liked the broadcast. I felt that Diffey ingratiated himself into the broadcast very easily. He’s shown in recent years that he can switch between different types of sports seamlessly. He’s only a couple of weeks removed from being part of the team calling the Olympics in Paris.
The on-track product was fast and furious and NBC did a pretty good job bringing that action to viewers. The NASCAR Nonstop setup did everything that it was supposed to. It didn’t really feel all that different to me.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series regular season ends at Darlington Raceway with the Cook Out Southern 500. It will be joined by the NASCAR Xfinity Series. The ARCA Menards Series also treks to the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds. That race will take place on Sunday, Sept. 1 at 8:30 p.m. ET with coverage provided by FOX Sports 1 and FloRacing.
The NTT IndyCar Series has a doubleheader at the Milwaukee Mile. Formula 1 makes its annual visit to Monza, while the FIA World Endurance Championship will be at Circuit of the Americas. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday night’s Cook Out Southern 500 and more content for your pleasure here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will look at Friday night’s Wawa 250 powered by Coca-Cola.
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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.
I hope you mean Diffey ‘integrated himself’ into the booth smoothly? (Sorry, but raised by 2 teachers, can’t help myself).
Could be either!
don’t the cars still run the two roof flaps? i thought those helped keep the cars on the ground once they deployed? reason i ask is so much was made of the new flap,which appears to be in the rear center of the roof.
His Australian American accent is a little much for me. And where is Daytonar? Bring back Rick Allen
The first and second stages left a lot to be desired. Diffey seemed lost…thankfully Steve and Jeff were there to pick up the baton. Sorry, Diffey is a nice fill for a one off, but I certainly hope he is not the long term solution…which Rick Allen clearly was. Another flub by NBC. I guess they don’t believe in the concept “If it ain’t broke, don’t break it”. Leave Diffey with Sports Cars and Indy Cars where he belongs…and leave NASCAR to the experts…
My first reaction to Diffey was I was not impressed. Bring back Allen Bestwick.
Please bring Rick Allen back.
If people complain about Leigh you can bet the networks don’t care, as they have shown after complaints about other announcers who shall remain unnamed.
Interesting that you all don’t like Leigh Diffy, because the Facebook comments on NBC’s page show they like him a lot.
All the writers seem to love Diffey, gushing over him, telling us how hard he works, blah, blah , blah.
The new generation of reporters tell us we are hillbillies and rednecks if we want AMERICANS !
First thing my wife said , and she’s watched 20 years of all Motorsports, who the hell is THAT?!!
Don’t tell me there isn’t some good USA talent , working just as hard as Diffey, out there. I agree Rick Allen sucked, needed replaced, but NBC blew this big time.
Will what we in The Peanut Gallery think matter? Of course not, but we can keep letting them know how stupid they are.
And cool it again with this we’re ignorant for wanting American voices on an American product!!! I was watching racing while you were still pooping green , Hot Rod!!
Just another attempt by the media to
” culture ” us.
It was funny listening to the booth gush over how successful NASCAR’s changes were at keeping McDowell’s car from going completely airborne, only for them to have to backtrack just a few minutes later. It looked to me that McDowell’s car didn’t get completely airborne because it got hung up on the 22’s nose. Watching the replay the 34’s driver’s window area was caught on the 22’s crumpled hood, and remained stuck there until they both hit the outside wall. I told my wife I thought the booth’s praise was a little premature, which proved to be true a few laps later.
I didn’t care for Diffey and I found nothing to like about Burton broadcasting his son’s win. But I never liked Ned Jarrett’s covering his sons racing either, or Stewart in the booth when his cars were on track, or DW broadcasting Michael’s races. Only Dale Jr seems able to separate himself from his team, when in the booth.
I remember when Leigh Diffey called races before and wished he still did so I am very happy he is back in the booth. I think he demonstrates the he knows more about racing. I also think Rick Allen sometimes showed favoritism.
Simply Diffey is the better announcer.