2024 was shaping up to be a big year for FOX Sports’ NASCAR coverage at the outset.
It ended up being bigger than most would have imagined.
Entering the season, the big news was the addition of Kevin Harvick to the broadcast booth full time for NASCAR Cup Series races. Harvick had been the best of the various guest analysts that had been working on NASCAR Xfinity Series broadcasts in recent years.
Also, since Harvick had just retired from full-time competition at the end of the 2023 season, he would have fresh knowledge of the Next Gen car and help explain a lot of the car’s idiosyncrasies.
Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2024 here
Viewers had plenty of advance knowledge of the move. FOX announced during the Clash weekend in Los Angeles last year that Harvick would be in the booth full time.
In addition, Harvick had worked with Clint Bowyer for many years previously, having been his teammate at both Richard Childress Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing. In other words, this man would know how to keep him on task.
The result was great at times, but not so much otherwise. The worst race of the season was Texas Motor Speedway in April, where Harvick all but accused Bowyer of being hungover on air.
I know for a fact that the Texas broadcast struck a nerve for a lot of people. It was one of the most-read articles at Frontstretch for the first half of 2024 with over 100,000 pageviews.
On the Xfinity side, Adam Alexander held up the fort with a revolving door of guest analysts. You could argue that it’s getting worse in that FOX wasn’t even releasing a schedule for who would be there; you’d only find out a week in advance. It must have been very taxing on Alexander to barely have any idea of what you’re going to have from week to week.
For the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, it had a mix of people in the booth. Jamie Little called some races, as did Alexander. The Little races did not particularly go all that well. Despite Little now having dozens of races on play-by-play under her belt, it seems like she’s plateaued, and not in a good place.
Something just seems off. She seems stilted at times and says some strange things up there. It’s hard to listen to at times. I don’t have any issues with Alexander’s booth calls.
Finally, you have the ARCA Menards Series. This season saw races split between FOX Sports 1 and FOX Sports 2, with 11 of the 20 races simulcast on FloRacing.
Those races were all over the place. You had races as support to Cup races that felt like early-season Truck broadcasts. You had races that felt like late-season Truck broadcasts with fully remote commentators, but regular ones.
Then you had races like Elko Speedway, where the regular play-by-play commentators weren’t in the house. In this case, you had Brent Stover on the call.
The standalone short track broadcasts (often in collaboration with FloRacing) felt much cheaper. Probably the closest comparison production-wise would be old races from 10 years ago when FS1 would air highlighted and tape-delayed races for the ARCA Menards Series East and West, with the exception that today’s ARCA races are live broadcasts.
As the year went on, things changed significantly at FOX. In May, it announced the cancellation of NASCAR RaceHub after 15 years and the effective shutdown of its Charlotte studios. It meant that NASCAR no longer has a weekday show to cover the sport on TV. A number of people, both on-air personalities and behind-the-scenes personnel, lost their jobs.
Of those people affected, Kaitlyn Vincie is still with FOX as part of the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast, which has been airing twice a week on FOX Sports 1 (Tuesday with a race recap, Thursday with an interview).
Shannon Spake left FOX and has picked up a couple of jobs. Her primary gig for now will be a sideline reporter for the Charlotte Hornets broadcasts on FanDuel Sports Network Southeast. She also hosted NASCAR Inside the Playoffs on TruTV and a roughly 10-minute YouTube show on NASCAR’s YouTube channel called NASCAR Daily that wrapped for the year on Nov. 8 after 45 episodes.
Other personalities got shoehorned into roles they may not have been comfortable. For example, Todd Bodine worked as a pit reporter in select Truck races. He has a lot to offer Truck broadcasts, but his skills aren’t really suited for pit road– and it showed.
Combine that with the continued remote broadcasts for the series after the Cup portion of the season ended, and you had a broadcaster that spent more than half of the season acting like a lame duck when it is clearly not.
The second half of the season saw FOX not really talk about racing much outside of its Truck and ARCA broadcasts. It just seemed solemn, like everyone was just going through the motions. Some people, like Josh Sims, left the racing beat to cover other sports.
2024 was altogether not a great year for FOX in NASCAR. Having Harvick join up was a highlight, but there was a number of issues that dragged its broadcasts down. Bad commentary, strange antics and what looked like apathy.
For 2025, the broadcast booth for Cup will be the same. Mike Joy will be back for his 25th year with FOX, along with Harvick and Bowyer. ‘
Outside of there, things might be a little different. That is due to the fact that FOX has signed a deal to broadcast the NTT IndyCar Series full time. All of the races will air live on FOX, and there is a decent likelihood that a couple of people could shift over to the IndyCar coverage. ‘
As of this writing, an on-air team for the IndyCar coverage has not been announced. It is possible that commentators from NBC Sports who have been covering IndyCar for years could take that over, but that is not guaranteed.
The Xfinity Series is gone from FOX. It will air full time on The CW in 2025.
For the Truck Series, FOX’ll have a new full-time play-by-play commentator at minimum. Alexander will be the play-by-play commentator for both the Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT/Max) portions of the schedule alongside Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte.
In addition, TruTV and Max will simulcast practice and qualifying for Cup for the entire second half of the season. He’ll be at the track every week from June to November.
With the Warner Bros. Discovery deal, Alexander is effectively back where he was in 2014. He took over the play-by-play role on TNT in 2011 after Bill Weber was dismissed and held that role for four six-race seasons.
Unless Little gets assigned to just IndyCar in 2025, there is a reasonable chance that she gets more Truck races on play-by-play. There is also the possibility that Eric Brennan, who does play-by-play for the zMAX CARS Tour races on FloRacing, could end up in the booth for some races. Stover might do some as well.
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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I may start watching the truck races if I don’t have to listen to Michael Waltrip.
Amen brother! He’s like a freakish Zombie… just wont go away… so many good people got axed at Fox, and we get MORE dumb jocks shows as a replacement.
Looking forward to Adam Alexander and crew…. now if only Dale Jrs voice didn’t sound like Alvin the Chipmunk every time he gets excited …
Miss Jamie McMurries insights, and Josh Simms was very good as well… Fox was just so STUPID!! Who knew billionaire Murdoc is so cheap!
I’ve enjoyed the Truck races, the coverage not so much. I find Waltrip a little tiring at times. Just too much excitement over nothing. Second gripe is the remote broadcast. Fox is really trying to cheap out on these races by only sending the bare min of personnel to cover these races. I wish NASCAR would mandate the reporting must be in person.
NASCAR Productions takes over the Truck broadcasts in the second part of the year, and they seem to be OK with the remote broadcasts. CW will also utilize remote broadcasts next year from the NASCAR Productions Facility in Concord, as FOX does in the second half for Trucks and ARCA.
Unfortunately, the reason is to save money, as FOX is there to cover Cup and trucks in the beginning of the year. Once FOX isn’t covering Cup, the trucks take a back-seat and they don’t send as many people.
Nascar doesn’t mandate anything to the networks after they paid Nascar so much money.
You’d be surprised how much control NASCAR actually has.
Really??? East Coast start times? TV time-outs? If NA$CAR has ANY control over anything they are not taking advantage of it for the “fans”.
They don’t care about the fans.