The playoffs are underway.
Swell. I’m not a fan of the playoffs for a variety of reasons. Some of those have to do with them existing at all. Others are based on how the playoffs affect broadcasts.
Thankfully, the playoffs started this year at Atlanta Motor Speedway. A pack-racing event generally is broadcast in a specific way and isn’t as heavily affected by the existence of the playoffs.
That said, if you watched on Sunday, it didn’t take long for the playoffs to make their presence known during “Countdown to Green.” There were two topics covered: the playoffs, and the finish back in February, of which Daniel Suarez recounted his steps to victory.
As compared to the past couple of weeks, Sunday’s broadcast didn’t quite have the quality control that we’ve become used to since NBC Sports took over in June.
Likely the biggest example of this was how the Kyle Larson crash was covered live.
Now, to be fair, I have no issue with how the booth handled the live call of this wreck. It was pretty much perfect.
However, it took quite a while to figure out that Chase Briscoe was even in this crash. You didn’t know that he was in it until the replay. It was only at that point that they realized that two playoff contenders were eliminated in the crash.
That scenario didn’t really sit right with me. I think part of the reasoning for this was the low camera shot in turn 2 for the wreck which meant that Larson’s car was obscured by smoke when Briscoe hit him. I couldn’t make out that Briscoe was in the wreck until the replay was shown.
Some of my colleagues were not exactly complimentary of Dave Burns at the infield care center. For lack of better words, they thought he was a jerk to Larson.
The last question about the points, we could have done without. That was obvious. Larson was about as forthcoming as he could be and really didn’t have anything else to say after the second question.
I guess that the producers wanted something more out of Larson, hence the extra questions. The extra questions yielded bupkis.
Later on, they tried to do a little bit of cross-promotion for the upcoming IMSA race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However, someone goofed.
Let it be known that the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks is Sept. 22 and will be split between NBC and Peacock.
I will be there to bring you the action, but the schedule should not affect my being able to critique the broadcasts from Bristol Motor Speedway unless WISH (the CW affiliate in Indianapolis) decides to pre-empt the NASCAR Xfinity Series race. Having said that, if NBC were to air the two-hour Michelin Pilot Challenge race from Indianapolis live that will be Sept. 21, I’d be really happy.
Rule of thumb. Proofread your work. You don’t want a simple mistake to go out to an audience of millions.
The embedding with crews that NBC Sports did quite a bit earlier this season appears to be over. It quietly went away for reasons that I’m unsure about. That said, you’re still seeing some of the aspects of it on the broadcast, such as the use of the in-car camera from Joey Logano’s car and a shot of his spotter, Coleman Pressley, talking to him. However, something seemed off here.
Usually, if someone’s in a position to move up into your driver’s fender like Todd Gilliland was, then you’d think that there would be some kind of reaction from the spotter. Not necessarily panic, but anything at all. We didn’t get here, which led me to think that the audio was not syncing up to what we were seeing.
Racing-wise, the race looked fairly similar to last year’s race, but we don’t have a direct comparison since last year’s race was called 25 laps into the final stage last year due to rain. What we do know is that the race was quite a bit more competitive than the Xfinity race on Saturday, where Justin Allgaier was seemingly the only driver who could put himself out there and make ground.
There was side-by-side action for quite a bit of the race, including some three-wide racing. It was very hard to pass, but with a good push, you could get it done.
There were quite a few comparisons of Sunday’s racing to late 1990s-early 2000s plate racing before the roof spoilers, especially when everyone was single-file. I don’t think that’s a perfect comparison.
Back then, it was much easier for small packs to get away. I would definitely argue that this was better than Speedweeks in 2000, where there were a grand total of 19 lead changes in 875 miles of racing (the Daytona 500, both Gatorade Twin 125s, the Bud Shootout and the Bud Shootout Qualifier).
You didn’t really see much in the way of breakaways Sunday. Or, you did and it didn’t really make the broadcast, which brings up the next point. This broadcast was very front-centric. Enough that it would have been hard to tell if drivers were falling off the pack. Denny Hamlin more or less did during stage 1 and his move was covered on the broadcast. Anything else, not so much.
Despite going for extra laps, the race ended a little ahead of schedule. As a result, viewers got a decent amount of post-race coverage. There were a number of interviews, the last of which was with Hamlin.
Now, Kyle Petty is not one to hold back with his opinions and Sunday was no different. He point-blank stated that Hamlin didn’t race on Sunday. He did as close to nothing as he could. I guess he thought this was going to be like Talladega Superspeedway and chose to hang back. I don’t think the broadcast thought that Hamlin was all but going to co-sign Petty, but that is effectively what we got.
The closest that I had to an issue with the broadcast booth is that the broadcasters downplayed the issues that Martin Truex Jr. had when he was in the crash with Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher. While it might not have seemed like much, Truex’s right front wheel went directly into Blaney’s side. You could see the damage right there.
When I saw that live on Sunday, I thought that Truex had bent or busted a tie rod. With the Damaged Vehicle Policy, that’s hard to fix. The team couldn’t take the time to do the fix right. Eventually, Truex retired from the race after it became clear that he couldn’t really drive it at speed.
The last-lap crash wasn’t completely ignored, but it definitely took a back seat. The call was such that it was a couple of minutes before viewers realized that the caution was out before the checkered flag came out. Perhaps NBC Sports should make use of the caution light shot that FOX Sports was using earlier this year for the final laps.
NBC Sports is in a position to take things from Sunday’s broadcast and fix them for Talladega next month. Watkins Glen International is going to be a completely different animal in the playoffs, though.
That’s all for this week. This weekend, the Cup Series playoffs continue at The Glen for what will be a one-off appearance (the race will go back to the traditional weekend in early August next year). They’ll be joined by the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series. IndyCar will wrap up its season at Nashville Superspeedway, Formula 1 will be in Azerbaijan and the FIA World Endurance Championship will be in Japan. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s 220-mile road race in Watkins Glen in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. For The Critic’s Annex in the Newsletter, we’re going to look at the new YouTube show NASCAR Daily that Shannon Spake is hosting. That show premiered Monday and is only 10 minutes long. So, we’ll look at the first four episodes for Friday.
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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.