The Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL always throws a wrench into the plans of teams. The track tends to provide strange and quirky races, with wrecks playing a big role in the outcome. I covered the first one for Frontstretch in 2018, and that race had a little of everything.
Sunday’s race had new elements due to the revised infield and re-aligned front chicane. The chicane caused a series of problems on Saturday (Oct. 12) as drivers dealt with physical issues with the curbs. That resulted in Saturday night modifications since drivers were dealing with a lot of the same issues that they were last year at Watkins Glen International.
The new curbs were much smaller and didn’t cause the same problems. However, they did result in NASCAR having to officiate track limits much more carefully. Bubba Wallace and Martin Truex Jr. found that out the hard way.
That said, Steve Letarte did a good job here of explaining exactly why Wallace had to make a stop-and-go at the backstretch chicane. Some fans watching the race Sunday might have found this penalty infuriating, but I’m more or less used to it.
Having covered roughly 30 sports car weekends for the site since 2017 when I first got my IMSA hard card, this is a regular thing. If anything, NASCAR is stricter than IMSA or SRO America on this issue since they don’t give warnings. They go straight to penalties.
Much of the coverage of the curb issues occurred during Countdown to Green. It only became a factor in the race when people got penalized as noted above. Had the bigger curbs still been in play on Sunday, I really don’t think you would have seen the penalties … at least from NASCAR. There would have been different penalties. More physical ones.
At this point, the biggest story to come out of Sunday was Alex Bowman getting disqualified for being underweight. It appears that this may have come out of Bowman launching himself off the frontstretch curbs three laps into the race and hitting the wall. Some of the available replays (unfortunately, not the one that made the broadcast) indicated that a small piece came out of the car when that happened.
Hendrick Motorsports announced that it will not appeal the penalty and will accept the DQ. If it would have appealed, then it would have been an expedited one like what Sam Mayer had after Talladega Superspeedway.
Had NBC shown a different one of the NASCAR Drive cameras, maybe the little piece that came off that I’ve seen around would have gotten some play on the broadcast. If it was ballast that came out of the car, then that’s pretty serious. It would also explain why the car was so far underweight since the ballast that NASCAR teams use tends to be in blocks that are a minimum of 25 pounds. Also, if you try to pick one of those blocks up, you might rip your arm off if you’re not careful.
If there’s one big takeaway from this broadcast, it’s that the playoff focus on the telecast was overwhelming. I get it, this was a cutoff race. But I found the focus on the playoffs to be too much. It completely overtook anything else having to do with the race.
It also made me think that the race itself was boring. Was that true? No.
According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, there was a little more passing per lap under green than last year’s race (35 per lap as compared to 34.8 last year). There were also five more laps under green this year.
We just didn’t see the racing for position. Why? Because NBC was so focused on a couple of specific drivers who weren’t really doing all that much. It was rather frustrating at times.
I suppose that Kyle Larson kicking tail likely played a role here in the race not looking all that exciting. No one could do much with him all day. Perhaps Shane van Gisbergen, who led 21 laps, could have done something, but his chances of winning ended when he got spun out in turn 7 on lap 62 by Carson Hocevar.
Even though Sunday’s race was a cutoff event, NBC should have taken great pains to show off the good action that was to be had. It seems like you only saw that if it involved playoff drivers. In most of the final stage Sunday, there wasn’t all that much movement among the playoff drivers except Tyler Reddick. So, you got a bunch of Reddick and everyone else seemingly being static. Not the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Having the playoff points always on the pylon meant that you couldn’t see where many drivers were running if they weren’t in the top 10. I just don’t like that. That whole setup was too bulky. It was too much.
We also missed out on some things for which I would have liked the answer. For example, both Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek were eliminated from the race after Ross Chastain spun in the frontstretch chicane right after a restart, collecting the Legacy Motor Club teammates.
While Nemechek’s nose was damaged, I have no clue how Nemechek nearly ripped his left-rear wheel off. That came off-camera somewhere and is likely why Jones dropped out as well. No idea what happened there. All I know for sure is that whatever happened occurred under yellow as a piece fell off Nemechek’s car to bring out that yellow.
All these complaints might seem familiar to longtime readers of this column. Why? These are effectively the same issues that I had with this broadcast last year, just with different drivers involved. The chicane policing last year was identical to what we had Sunday and drivers got burned by it. Reddick hurting himself by winning a stage? That happened, too.
NBC took a lot of time to show fans in the stands, which was interesting because it was really hard to make out how many fans were even at the race on the broadcast. One guy in particular was a hoot. He was wearing a red t-shirt with shorts, paired with ski goggles and a winter hat. Ridiculous getup for a day when it was 79°.
When I went to Charlotte in 2018 for the inaugural ROVAL race, the word that I heard at the track was that attendance was up significantly from the previous year’s 500-mile day race, but it was still far from a sellout. At the time, that made me wonder what attendance had been the previous fall. Sunday’s race didn’t seem to have anything close to that kind of attendance.
Post-race coverage was about average. Viewers got a half-dozen interviews, a look at the Round of 8 standings and some post-race analysis before leaving for the news.
Overall, this was a cutoff race and it was produced like one, much to the detriment of the viewers. I don’t want to feel lost when I’m watching a race. Perhaps I’m watching for different reasons than what NASCAR would like me to be. Regardless, it seems that nothing was learned from last year because NBC basically copied and pasted its broadcast production.
Even before the Chase/playoff was created, I never liked the last portion of the season. Part of that was the season coming to an end and not being able to watch racing for most of the winter months. Another was the championship conversation. It was nowhere near as bad as it is now, but it was noticeable, especially in 1992.
There is more going on in a Cup race these days than just what’s going on with the playoff contenders. You wouldn’t have known that if you watched last year’s South Point 400, though. I want the best for NASCAR on TV, but if last year’s Las Vegas race is anything to go on, I’m not going to have high expectations.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the Round of 8 starts for both the NASCAR Cup and NASCAR Xfinity Series with a trip to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Formula 1 returns from a brief hiatus to race at Circuit of the Americas. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of the South Point 400 in next weekend’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will cover Saturday’s Drive for the Cure 250k.
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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.