Welcome back, race fans. This will be my 17th year bringing you criticism of TV broadcasts. The hope is that I can bring attention to both the good and the not so good on broadcasts. There’s a lot of change for 2025.
That said, we’re starting the year with a broadcast that has the least change compared to last season. For this year, pretty much everyone is back in their previous roles. FOX’s booth of Mike Joy, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer are all back, as are Jamie Little and Regan Smith in the pits (expect additional pit support at Daytona International Speedway).
This year, NASCAR started the season off at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C. as opposed to Los Angeles. You had a smaller crowd than either 2022 or 2023 (given the circumstances, we’re not going to count last year here), but these dudes were raucous.
Likely the only real change in on-air talent that we saw last weekend at Bowman Gray Stadium was the addition of Jamie McMurray to NASCAR RaceDay. I like McMurray on broadcasts and sincerely believe that he’ll do well on The CW later this year. However, I have no idea what the plan was here.
On paper, this setup will have McMurray co-hosting NASCAR RaceDay with Chris Myers. However, Bowyer and Harvick tend to join in as well. That makes for a four-person standup and things get busy. On multiple occasions on Sunday (Feb. 2) night, people like Richard Childress and Noah Gragson joined the group. Now, you have five people trying to get a word in edgewise. It’s a mess. I don’t understand this move.
It was already busy with three people there and had a special guest last year. We’ll just use Joey Logano as an example. Logano shows up for a conversation before the spring race at Phoenix Raceway and he chats with Myers, Harvick and Bowyer. It’s already a bit much there. Now, you have four people peppering the guest with questions.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised that McMurray is back with FOX Sports this year. I was under the opinion that it didn’t think much of McMurray as an on-air personality. That belief was why he never got more of a shot in the booth on FOX broadcasts. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter.
During the races on Sunday, there were no full-screen commercial breaks. The Last Chance Qualifier never ran long enough under green that they could’ve had a commercial. Meanwhile, the 200-lap main event had four commercial breaks, all of which were side-by-side breaks. That’s good to see, but I’m not sure if that’s going to be how the whole FOX portion of the season will ultimately work. My guess is no due to the existence of local commercial breaks, but it was nice to see us not miss that much due to them. At Bowman Gray, a full-length commercial interruption will see you miss more than 5% of the race, so having those side-by-side breaks was important.
Racing-wise, I think we got a different product than I expected. I knew that there was going to be contact and there was plenty of that. What I didn’t think I’d see was significant movement through the field.
Ryan Blaney only got into the 200-lap feature by virtue of Logano racing in through his heat on Saturday. That allowed Blaney to just poke around in the LCQ and take the last spot in the field since he finished second in points last year.
Blaney then methodically made his way forward fairly cleanly. He got to 10th by the halftime break, then got all the way to the front. By the end of the race, he was fighting Chase Elliott for the win. Had he pulled off the victory, it would have been a well-deserved triumph.
The action was very close, but it was possible to pull off clean passes, especially later in the runs. The tires dropped off around three-quarters of a second during each half of the race, meaning that it was possible to get under someone if you had the better tires.
FOX seemed to do better regarding finding action for a position in the earlier laps. It clamped down quite a bit late in the race, which I’ve noticed over the years that it’s prone to do. That’s how you end up in a position where you don’t even realize that only 11 cars finished on the lead lap Sunday night knowing that the entire field was on the lead lap with 80 laps to go.
As for incidents, FOX generally had them covered pretty well. The exception to that rule was in the Last Chance Qualifier. With 10 laps to go, Burt Myers was running an impressive eighth in his Team AmeriVet No. 50 when he crashed hard in turn 1 after contact with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the biggest hit of the night.
FOX didn’t get a good view of what happened to Myers. The replay above looks like Stenhouse took him out. That doesn’t quite seem to be the truth, though. It looks more like he was trying to set himself up for the turn and went across Stenhouse’s nose.
😔 Burt Myers gets wrecked out HARD by @StenhouseJr after making it all the way up to P8. pic.twitter.com/YDp4YIz47P
— NASCAR Regional (@NASCARRegional) February 3, 2025
Myers was unclear as to what happened and FOX didn’t help him out. Yes, the announcers showed him a replay (not shown in either of the clips above), but he couldn’t tell anything from it. As a result, both Myers and the audience came away from the broadcast thinking something different from what occurred happened to cause the wreck.
While the LCQ had more than its share of stupid stuff happen, it wasn’t utter chaos. Ty Gibbs tried to up the ante with his attempted payback on Justin Haley after Gibbs spun. That didn’t work out well for him.
Yes, Gibbs’ move was ridiculous and cartoonish. I’m not shocked that he ended up feeling stiff afterward because Next Gen cars are not designed to pop massive wheelies. This is not Crandon.
If you wanted to see stupid stuff, Saturday’s Cook Out Madhouse Classic on FloRacing was more your speed. It was probably one of the more frustrating races that I’ve watched. Criminy. It says a lot that the birds were flying half a lap into that race.
Speaking of the LCQ, the nine cautions in it (including the final one that ended the race a little early) resulted in the feature starting 20 minutes late. As a result, the broadcast ran long. Viewers only managed to get interviews with Elliott and Blaney before FOX left Winston-Salem to get to the local news (which at least in Albany, was tape-delayed).
Overall, Sunday night’s broadcast was a good way to get back in the flow of things for FOX. There was some good racing to be had, much better than I expected. The NASCAR RaceDay situation bears watching because I think that could get messy, especially when it’s time for the Daytona 500 in two weeks. Myers and McMurray would work together well like they did during the halftime break, but having everyone else around them is messy.
The booth worked well together. They weren’t necessarily in regular season form, but they did bring some good analysis. Harvick, in particular, was really good in describing how the tires wear on Next Gen cars in this context since we never dealt with that at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum due to fresh pavement every year.
That’s all for this week. Next week, there will not be a column. Quite simply, it is the calm before the storm. Teams will leave their shops on Monday for the trip to Daytona.
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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.
Thanks and glad you are back.
Yes, thanks again for another year of letting us regular types chime in!
I thought The Clash was spot on, just what we needed, a great “event” , getting us primed for , hopefully, a good season. The broadcast was fine, no real issues… amazing I know!
Boys, have at it!!!
I’m going to be much harsher on the broadcast. Mike Joy’s excessive references during the LCQ to only the top 2 advancing almost made it into a drinking game for me — and then I would have missed the feature. lt was repeated way too often for audience where I believe most would know that.
I was also disappointed that it took only a few minutes into the broadcasts for the Boyer-Harvick nonsense to start. Way too much “Chiefs” nonsense (and I’m a fan) and other “banter” — I’d prefer none of that crap. There was also a point you noted because of four people at times where the camera focused on Kevin — just staring and saying nothing — for way too long. I enjoy Harvick; get little or nothing from Boyer. Was really hoping for some major changes this year. I’ll remain hopeful for Daytona and more, but…