With Daytona International Speedway out of the way, things moved toward normalcy last weekend in Atlanta Motor Speedway. Of course, given the recent reconfiguration, Atlanta is anything but normal these days.
NASCAR RaceDay started on FOX Sports 1 Sunday (Feb. 23) due to the UConn-St. John’s college basketball game running long. The first 35 minutes of pre-race coverage ended up there.
For a post-Daytona pre-race, it seemed rather typical. Michael Waltrip sat down with William Byron to talk about the Daytona 500 and how he handled winning back-to-back years. Nothing mind-shattering but at least interesting.
Ryan Preece, along with his wife Heather, talked about the sensations that came with his big crash in Daytona. Needless to say, this stuff is concerning to him and his family. He doesn’t want to stop racing but thinks that NASCAR needs to do something about the current situation as he thought this was much scarier than his barrel roll in August 2023. He said as much at the infield care center in Daytona.
Something that I didn’t get a chance to touch on during the Daytona critique is the changes in how commercial breaks are being handled this year. So far this season, you haven’t really seen any full-screen commercial breaks under green. Previously, you’d only see the side-by-side breaks in the second half of the race.
On Sunday, you had eight side-by-side breaks under green and a couple more under yellow. The full-screen breaks were only during cautions and before the race started. So far, the move is positive in that viewers see more action than before. For example, the first three cautions in stage two occurred during these breaks. That said, scheduling when those breaks take place may leave something to be desired. In other words, they may be too close together, even though there really aren’t any more breaks than last year.
One thing that FOX can’t seem to get right is the part of the race where the broadcast highlights a pit crew (in this case, Byron’s crew). For the second week in a row, this was screwed up as someone told Jamie Little to talk over it. This was worse than Daytona because FOX compounded its error by showing one of Todd Gilliland’s crewmembers while running the audio of the piece. There needs to be some better direction here because it seems like everyone is missing their cues.
The lap 184 crash was nastier than the broadcast made it out to be. In particular, Cody Ware stated that he had pain in his ear afterward, but did not suffer a concussion.
The on-track product was fast and furious with a race-record 50 lead changes. What you saw on Sunday was very similar to last year. I guess the track still isn’t wearing tires enough yet. Cars that are ill-handling can still hang around. Riley Herbst’s No. 35 wasn’t the best and may have contributed to at least one of the cautions by getting tight and forcing a checkup.
I’m not sure how much the tires were wearing on Sunday. That isn’t something that made the broadcast, despite the fact that we had a couple of tire failures last weekend. It should have been shown on-air at some point during the race.
Unfortunately for race fans, the last-lap caution issue came into play once again Sunday, the third time already this season in the NASCAR Cup Series.
The helicopter view was a good choice, but it may have been zoomed in too far. As a result, viewers didn’t see the crash live that ended the race.
Mike Joy explained that NASCAR chose to throw the caution because of cars continuing to drive into the field of debris entering turn 3. This is more or less consistent with what Elton Sawyer said NASCAR would do in the situation, but it still angered fans.
Post-race coverage was fairly brief due to FOX giving the race a 210-minute timeslot. That was reached with 19 laps to go in the race. As a result, viewers only got interviews with the top-three finishers (Christopher Bell, Carson Hocevar and Kyle Larson) before leaving Atlanta. Given how the previous six races at the reconfigured Atlanta have gone, I don’t understand the timeslot length.
This weekend also had the debut of Amazon Prime Video coverage of qualifying, which will be produced by whoever’s airing the Cup races that weekend. Ultimately, it went well, although Clint Bowyer broke some things during the broadcast by accident. A difference from the FOX broadcasts is that the cartoon animations that depict the drivers resembling superheroes are out.
On paper, this setup is somewhat similar to what happened in 2002. When the first series-wide TV deal began in 2001, practice and qualifying for the NBC/TNT portion of the season was supposed to air on CNN/Sports Illustrated (CNN/SI). It did as scheduled that year. However, the cable channel folded seven weeks before the second year of NBC/TNT’s coverage was scheduled to start, resulting in SPEED Channel picking up that programming. Coverage in the second half of the year of practice and qualifying aired on SPEED Channel, but with graphics that looked like they would on NBC/TNT broadcasts.
Overall, I’m not the biggest fan of the revised Atlanta, to be honest. I’ve been slow to warm to it. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want superspeedway-style races on back-to-back weeks. It’s OK when you’re pressed into it due to an emergency (Ex: 1998, when wildfires forced NASCAR to run Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona in back-to-back weeks), but not as a regularly scheduled thing.
The racing was generally quite competitive, and FOX did a decent job bringing that action and the runs to viewers. I have a couple of gripes.
I don’t think FOX was the best in bringing updates on teams that ended up behind the wall and when they returned to the race. I understand that they have to get used to that again since the Damaged Vehicle Policy had rendered that moot for so many years, but that needs to be covered. As it stands, viewers were forced to guess who was trying to make repairs and who was just plain out unless they saw them at the infield care center.
I am unsure if NASCAR will allow FOX (or the other TV partners for the Cup Series) to do in-garage interviews with drivers getting cars repaired after crashes. My guess is that NASCAR doesn’t disallow it, but the teams will since the drivers cannot get out of the cars.
FOX needs to clean up its production and direction to fix the problems noted above. I’d also like to see Joy be more assertive on the broadcasts since Bowyer is beginning to trample on where he should be the primary commentator at times.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series teams travel to Austin, Texas, for their fifth visit to Circuit of the Americas. This time, they’ll be racing on the shorter national circuit, which no one entered has raced on…except for Shane van Gisbergen. IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge is also on the undercard. In addition, the NTT IndyCar Series starts its 2025 season on FOX in St. Petersburg. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex this week will have a recap of the Fr8 208 for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Also, stay tuned as I will have a more in-depth look at the NASCAR Driver Cam on Max at Frontstretch.
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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.
it will be interesting to see if cart runs into rain in st petersburg, fl, how fox will deal with the nascar race later in the afternoon.
Off to FS1 for IRL.
Mike Joy needs to stick with Barrett Jackson. He was good for a long time. Now it’s time to go. Harvick and Bowyer are like oil and water. Harvick spends too much time mansplaining things and contradicting Bowyer at every opportunity. Happy isn’t happy any longer because he sold his soul to NASCAR. Because of the constant bickering and trying to prove pointless arguments, the booth forgets to do their job.
Shut up and call the damn race.
“I am unsure if NASCAR will allow FOX (or the other TV partners for the Cup Series) to do in-garage interviews with drivers getting cars repaired after crashes. My guess is that NASCAR doesn’t disallow it, but the teams will since the drivers cannot get out of the cars.”
So, what is the policy on when a driver has to get out of the car and go to the infield care center, and when he can be towed back and fixed?
I like Mike Joy. I would prefer Bowyer talk less and Mike talk more
I like Mike as well, he knows the sport, and has even been part of its history, and important to many of us, he grew up here, knows us, and our crazy ways. Unlike other networks with well intentioned interlopers.
Boyer must be taking lessons from Tom Brady, talking WAY too much!! Ugh.
It does sound as if Kevin and Clint like to spar with each other, maybe spurred on by behind the scenes Fox producer shenanigans ??… but it is noticeable even to a doofus like me!
COTA should be , um, interesting.