In the world of motorsports, Darlington Raceway is truly unique.
Now in its 75th year, the track was built with an egg-shaped design to avoid a minnow pond. It is quirkiness personified. If someone built it today, it would look like the no longer-used oval at Mobility Resort Motegi in Japan (formerly Twin Ring Motegi).
For Leigh Diffey, Darlington was the race that he was looking forward to calling this year. Before this past weekend, he’d never been to Darlington, so he was looking forward to experiencing it.
I’ve never been either.
Sunday night (Sept. 1) was also the final race of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season. As a result, there was a lot of focus on the cutoff and drivers trying their darndest to get into the playoffs.
Of course, as we know, it ultimately didn’t matter since Chase Briscoe rained on their parade.
Darlington is tricky to race at and who better than the last two winners on the 1.366-mile oval (Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski) to ask about what it takes to win. That is the route that NBC Sports took Sunday during Countdown to Green. After that, it was pretty much all cut off coverage.
Racing-wise, Sunday night’s race was nearly identical to last year. The only difference was that there was one driver (Larson) who was dominant at the front for much more of the race. According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, the amount of passing was all but equal.
If you watched the race, it didn’t seem like it for much of the race.
You would have thought that the passing ticked up in the final 50 laps when the pit strategy came into play. In reality, I think the lack of cautions in the first two stages led to the race getting a little spread out, but the broadcast was too centered on the point storylines to cover much in the way of racing. That is a strategy that hurts broadcasts. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t like playoff time in NASCAR.
A lot of the content that we got Sunday night was based around pit strategy. As I explained when I critiqued the broadcast at Richmond Raceway, NBC Sports is the better outfit to have covering such a race. Viewers had a clear idea of the different strategies at play during the green-flag stops (who stopped short, who was going long, etc.).
It also came into play late in the race when the cautions came out often enough to lead to a split pit sequence. Diffey, Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte were in a good position to keep viewers abreast of the various strategies at play.
Compared to last year, there was a lot more to race for in the final race of the regular season.
Entering the final regular season race at Daytona International Speedway last year, 15 spots had already been locked up. The final spot was either going to be Bubba Wallace (the best non-winner in points) or a new winner. Ty Gibbs could have gotten in on points but he entered Daytona 32 points behind Wallace and would have needed help. There wasn’t much to talk about regarding it and NBC’s broadcast suffered at times because of it.
Here, with three spots up for grabs, it decided to go all out. Martin Truex Jr. crashing out on lap 3 likely made the focus even bigger.
Approaching the race in that fashion means that a lot of stories get lost. Heck, Chase Elliott was nearly invisible at times Sunday night.
He got back in the top 10 late before dropping to 11th. Corey LaJoie scored a ninth-place finish at one of his better tracks. You didn’t hear much about him on the broadcast.
Speaking of Briscoe, toward the end of the race, there was a fair amount of commentary that had to beat home the point that Briscoe had been up front all night. This is true. Briscoe scored 17 stage points and spent a substantial amount of time in the top five. However, I don’t know if anyone’s going to remember that.
What people will remember is that Briscoe got onto a different pit strategy that allowed him to blitz the leaders in the final 35 laps. Briscoe made an almighty move to go from fourth to the lead on lap 342.
This was an unorthodox move.
Things like this typically don’t work at Darlington. The more likely result would be a bunch of beat-up race cars. However, Briscoe pulled it off and did it clean. Diffey was amazed, as were a lot of the people watching the race.
In past years, NBC Sports would have some special setup in play during stage two of the race. For the last couple of years, it would team up Kyle Petty, Dale Jarrett and Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the booth. For a couple of years early on when the Southern 500 was part of Throwback Weekend, Ken Squier and Ned Jarrett were in the booth together.
With the recent changes to NBC Sports’ on-air team, it chose to dispense with the special setups.
While yes, it means the broadcast had more continuity, you did lose something. This likely would have been harder to pull off now that Earnhardt is no longer with the network. The chemistry likely wouldn’t have been there.
The race went over the scheduled end of the broadcast, which surprised me none as the time slot for the race was less time than the race had taken the previous three years.
Viewers got to hear from Briscoe, Busch and a number of other drivers who made the playoffs and the three biggest misses (Wallace, Chris Buescher and Ross Chastain). Compared to last year, it was a little more post-race coverage. Then again, the race was about 13 minutes shorter.
Overall, I’m generally not a fan of playoff coverage. Everything narrows up and you get much less of an idea of what’s going on. Superspeedway races tend to be the exception to the rule since most of the field stays close together in packs. It’s easier to cover everyone since they’re right there.
Sunday night’s broadcast was very much focused on the playoff points cut off and the drivers battling for those final couple of spots. That likely came at a detriment to the rest of the on-track product. In other words, if you were watching on TV, you didn’t see the best possible race.
Diffey did a great job in Darlington. He brought all the same enthusiasm to Darlington that he had in Daytona. I’m happy that he appears to be settling into his new NASCAR gig fairly easily.
That said, I’ve seen a lot of random criticism of Diffey for issues of nomenclature and being himself the past couple of weeks. It’s like some of these people don’t realize that he’s spent the vast majority of his TV career calling sports car racing, INDYCAR and Formula 1. It seems like people treat calling a NASCAR race like working on a racecar in NASCAR.
Either you use the NASCAR-specific terminology for everything, or you’re useless. As far as I’m concerned, if the information being presented is correct, then it’s fine.
I’ve dealt with some of this myself over the years here at Frontstretch. For example, race fans seem to hate the lowest terms regarding fractions, and I cannot figure out why. For example, South Boston Speedway is a four-tenths of a mile oval in Southern Virginia, a former host of races in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and what is now the NASCAR Xfinity Series. If this were a math class, you would likely refer to it as a two-fifths of a mile oval.
If you referred to South Boston as a two-fifths of a mile oval (even though it would be correct) to a race fan here in the United States, they’d either look at you like you were nuts or outright try to correct you. Why? I have no clue.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs get underway with a nightmare of a race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Cup will be joined by the Xfinity Series. SRO America will race at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama as well. TV listings can be found here.
We’ll have a critique of the Quaker State 400 from Atlanta in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. Remember that there will once again be no green-flag full-screen commercials in Atlanta. The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will cover Saturday’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200, or “How Sheldon Creed got beat by a caution.”
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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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Drives me nuts when they insist on showing the ‘points as they run now’ every time the positions change. Nothing counts until the checkered flag! Widen the focus and cover the entire field!
At lease wait until the last stage. Then once they get back to racing, it a more accurate point count.
i realized driving into work that the coverage will now be on those in the bracket races for the championship.
we could use rain here in georgia. hopefully not on sunday afternoon.
It’s getting to the point where Screech and Scrong are making a lot of viewers go to mute for the telecast of the product. They are getting to sound levels only dogs can hear. But nothing will change.
Sadly you are absolutely correct. Id gladly have Ward over Jeff any day.
I can’t believe they bring Burton and Jarrett back year after year. They both need a neti-pot.
I didn’t like the extra two boxes at the bottom of the screen. If there was something happening, it should be covered as part of the regular coverage.
I don’t think the track length dispute (four-tenths versus two-fifths) is about terminology. It’s about how South Boston markets itself, something a die-hard NASCAR fan would know. NASCAR fans definitely want to feel like the announcer is one of their own, and calling South Boston something other than what’s listed in the track’s own facts signals to them that Lee Diffey has never heard of the place.
The last green flag run using the in car from Busch with Burton narrating the lines in which Busch was taking was very enjoyable to watch and listen to.
I actually think Diffey’s knowledge brings a different look to the broadcast. He definitely knows his stuff and knows who’s driving which car. The problem I have is the over the top yelling and drama that he tries to create. The last 10 laps were unbearable. Add in a split screen of only showing Busch’s in car, the rear end of Briscoe’s car lap after lap to the detriment of anything else going on and it wasn’t very enjoyable. It has nothing to do with his Nascar knowledge.