The Daytona 500 is the biggest race of the season for NASCAR in more ways than one. Not only is it the richest race on the calendar with a purse of over $30 million, but it is something of a sign of how the rest of the season is likely to go, TV-wise.
Unfortunately, Sunday’s (Feb. 16) race was marred by rain again. For the fourth time in six years, the race was significantly delayed. The weather forecast on FOX 35 out of Orlando back on Friday pretty much nailed what we got on Sunday. Based on that, I predicted that the race would likely end around 8:30 p.m. ET when we made our picks for who would win (mind you, the time that the race would conclude was not asked for).
In response, NASCAR moved up the start of the race by a full hour, something that it has the authority to do so with proper notice to the networks. Ultimately, that move didn’t really do much as it rained less than 10 minutes after the green flag.
With more than three hours to kill, what did FOX do? The announcers interviewed a bunch of people. According to their stats, 26 different drivers were interviewed over roughly two hours before they left Daytona International Speedway to provide bonus coverage of last year’s race.
At first, the coverage started decent. Yes, you were bummed that FOX did it, but it was satisfying. Then, it became really obvious that FOX was getting bored. It’s one thing for that to seem like it was so, it’s another for Chris Myers and Jamie McMurray to admit that they were bored.
In addition, I know that I’ve mentioned this in the past, but why does FOX continually have Myers play a dolt on NASCAR broadcasts? He is never like this anywhere else, but have him on a NASCAR Cup Series broadcast and all of a sudden, you get things like “we kid because we care” and other stupid things. It drives me nuts.
This is a production issue since Myers cannot be that willfully stupid. He’s been with FOX’s NASCAR coverage since 2001 (he’s one of three on-air personalities, along with Mike Joy and Larry McReynolds, who are left from when FOX first got NASCAR rights). In that time, you will learn things. He has other responsibilities outside of NASCAR, but that shouldn’t result in him wearing blinders for NASCAR coverage. Someone is requiring him to play dumb on broadcasts and it has to stop.
The big story in the background of NASCAR RaceDay was the fact that President Trump was going to make an appearance in Daytona. As compared to the last time this happened (2020), he did even less (you might remember that he gave the command to start engines back then).
Trump did an interview with Jamie Little on pit road after the National Anthem. Then, he hopped in The Beast and took a couple of laps around the track. The broadcast made it sound like he was going to hang around for stage one, but I’m not sure that was ever the plan. He was on Air Force One and leaving Daytona Beach pretty soon after the rain came.
Compared to 2020, this appearance was more political, especially during his interview. Generally speaking, FOX Sports doesn’t allow political discussion to seep into broadcasts. However, I felt that Sunday’s broadcast got uncomfortably close to that.
FOX went all out promoting some of its new programming in Daytona. That included inviting Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon down there to hang out to promote their new TV deal with INDYCAR that starts in two weeks. Neither has ever driven in NASCAR, although Dixon is open to the idea.
It seems like FOX frontloaded all of its feature pieces Sunday since I’m unsure whether or not it’s going to have time to air any beyond this past weekend for the rest of its portion of the season. I’ll be brief here in describing them.
I’d argue that the best one saw Clint Bowyer sit down with Kyle Larson. The discussion was centered around his lack of success at Daytona compared to…basically everything else, overall aggression and how he wants to be perceived as a race car driver.
In all honesty, Larson is kind of quiet and the whole mess that he got himself into back in 2020 due to being impressionable around the wrong people has made him quieter to the public at large. Outside of his racing exploits, you don’t hear much out of him. Here, he basically stated that he wants to be considered the best race car driver in the world. That’s going to be hard to prove to the world at large, but he’s pretty dang good right now.
Another feature had Kevin Harvick sitting down with Joey Logano and Roger Penske. The topics here centered around the thought process around bringing Logano to Penske for 2013, a move that some commentators, such as Rusty Wallace (as noted in the piece) were skeptical about at the time since Logano had never finished higher than 17th in points.
The champ and his boss. @JoeyLogano and Roger Penske talk with @KevinHarvick. pic.twitter.com/hZUTIfrazh
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 16, 2025
After his time with Joe Gibbs Racing ended, Logano wanted a fresh start and Penske needed something good since the No. 22 team was supposed to be AJ Allmendinger’s for the long haul, but Allmendinger failed a drug test the previous year and was dropped.
The worst piece that made the broadcast was a montage in celebration of FOX’s 25th year broadcasting the Cup Series. I get it, you’d want to celebrate that. But, why on earth would you include the aftermath of Dale Earnhardt’s fatal crash in the piece? That is highly inappropriate. Heck no.
I found the race coverage to be fairly decent, although it should be stated that superspeedway races are the easiest events to cover as a whole. Even Atlanta Motor Speedway next weekend will be more difficult to cover than Daytona.
I did have gripes, though. One is the fact that FOX seemed to be rather slow in informing viewers about drivers who had problems. For example, Jimmie Johnson made an unscheduled pit stop before the end of stage two, took two tires and managed to not get lapped before the stage end. That allowed him to take fuel only and put himself into contention.
I wanted to know more there. Remember that he had fuel pickup issues during his Duel Thursday night. It was unclear whether that was solved or not (I don’t think it was during practice on Friday, at the minimum).
Allmendinger was the first driver out due to an engine failure. We never heard anything about it other than Joy noting that the car was being pushed behind the wall. Never heard anything else. FOX was also slow in indicating that Helio Castroneves had retired from the race.
Likely the most notable of the bunch involved Kyle Busch. FOX showed him being towed back to the garage after wrecking on lap 186. Under the new Damaged Vehicle Policy rules, he could make repairs and return. He did and we saw him with sparks coming out of his No. 8 Chevrolet. Then you didn’t hear anything, then he was out.
Busch said a little bit to FOX, but not too much. He said next to nothing to MRN Radio’s Alan Cavanna. Then, he more or less ranted about the situation to the media.
Since the race went long by more than four hours, post-race coverage was fairly brief. Viewers got a few interviews, including with race winner William Byron before leaving for Family Guy.
Sunday’s broadcast had some good moments. However, there are things that FOX needs to fix. It needs to refocus on the basics of acquiring information and bringing that information to viewers. If there’s a debris caution, find the debris (FOX cameras failed to do multiple times Sunday).
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, NASCAR’s national-level series travel to Atlanta for another tripleheader weekend. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll look at FOX’s broadcast of the Ambetter Health 400 from Atlanta and cover other things that come up. In the Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter, we will cover The CW’s official debut on Saturday from Daytona.
Also, remember that the new coverage rules for the Cup Series regarding practice and qualifying start this weekend. That coverage can now be found on Amazon Prime Video.
If you have a gripe with me or just want to say something about my critique, feel free to post in the comments below. Even though I can’t always respond, I do read your comments. Also, if you want to “like” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, please click on the appropriate icons. If you would like to contact either of NASCAR’s media partners, click on either of the links below.
As always, if you choose to contact a network by email, do so in a courteous manner. Network representatives are far more likely to respond to emails that ask questions politely rather than emails full of rants and vitriol.
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.
I also felt like Fox was covering the highlights only. Poor job on covering all but the action on the track at the moment. In fairness, you can’t cover what’s
happening in the pits from sitting in the booth. I can’t even tell you who the pit reporter(s) were. (Maybe they had early flights?) I think the elements in the booth were good. Part of Chris Myers job is to serve up things for the experts to comment and perhaps Fox told him to do so at a 4th grade level. When someone does that job well, they aren’t even noticed. In fairness, they had a lot of time to kill. Maybe I missed it, but Fox not even mentioning Pitbull, who was pre-race entertainment, seemed odd given his stature, but he just bailed on Trackhouse so I guess he’s no longer worth mentioning.
I would start grooming Harvick to take over for Myers. Benny Parsons was terrific in that role. And get some pit reporters in there asking questions and doing something other than hanging out at the Care Center.
I was definitely surprised to see Pitbull as pre-race entertainment after the announcement that he left Trackhouse.
I’d just like to mention that the Xfinity race broadcast on The CW had the running order at the bottom of the screen for the top 25 cars. I’d like to see the all the networks follow suit. In fact they should try to make it 30.
I get to watch the truck events on SPEED now with FIBE and they showed a caution light on the bottom of the screen for the last few laps on Friday night. I thought it was a brilliant idea that should be used by all the networks.
I wish I had been able to see it, but when I tried to watch the race, it took forever for it to load, then when it finally did…bupkus, nothing, nada. It was fine for the rained out quals, but come race time, Nothing…unless I was willing to watch the entire race from an in car camera of one driver. So far, not impressed with the CW and their inability to actually show the race.
i was kind of surprised that with all the coverage jrmotorsports received during the week leading up to the 500, that they did not interview jr after the race since the team came home with a top 10 finish and most of the car being intact.
i did see frontstretch’s interview with jr after the race online.
JR Motorsports was a non-factor all race long, why should they interview them?
Your complaints about Fox’s failure to follow up on why a car pitted out of sequence or dropped out of the race, and the booth dumbing the broadcast are nothing new and things me and others have complained about for years.
All year long you can be watching a race and someone will be advancing through the field or running near the front, and then they’re gone and we never find out why. If it’s not a Penske, Hendricks or Gibbs driver the broadcasts rarely bother to find out what happened to or went wrong with a car.
As far as dumbing down the broadcast, have you forgotten Darrell Waltrip? I’ve always felt Fox has a very low opinion of NASCAR fans. They seem to consider them to be a bunch of clueless hicks, and tailor their broadcasts that way. They’ve never dumbed down the their NFL, MLB, NCAA broadcasts the way they do NASCAR, and I’m betting they won’t do it on Indycar either.
Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if they’d had a stupid animated gopher (or groundhog, whatever it was) pop up in the middle of a NFL field, like they use to do in NASCAR broadcasts?
that’s who Fox attracts, Murdock flat out admitted it. Can’t beat from the horses mouth.
It’s so bad, I miss ole DW.
NO!!! Nothing is that bad! Please! Mikey stumbling thru the grid walk is stupid enough.
It’s the first broadcast of the year, nobody is going to get it perfect. I was happy just to see some racing, not really all super critical, happy to get the season going.
Oh no I don’t miss ole DW at all.
Wow, Phil. Maybe you should be in charge Fox broadcasts and we’d see how great you can do, especially with filling umpteen hours of rain delay.
It wasn’t long enough for FOX to run out of commercials by the end. Maybe next time.
What did you expect during the rain delay? Geesh!
Another thought: Live coverage isn’t perfect and cannot be, so live with it.