Last weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series was off for Easter Weekend. Meanwhile, the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series spent the weekend at Rockingham Speedway. What followed were a series of interesting events, but for different reasons.
With the Xfinity Series taking center stage over the weekend, The CW gave viewers a full hour edition of NASCAR Countdown Live. There, nine different drivers were interviewed and we got a decent idea of what to expect in the scheduled 250-lap race.
There was something that was clearly lacking, though. The CW did not bother to send the broadcast booth to Rockingham. I find the idea of that to be ridiculous, especially for this weekend. You’re the main show of the weekend, and they’re not willing to send the booth. It’s sad.
A quick check indicates that it is less than two hours to drive to the track from the Charlotte area.
For a venue like Rockingham, the track is small enough that you can see almost everything from the booth. Parker Kligerman or Jamie McMurray would easily be able to point out things that would have benefited the broadcast.
While some viewers don’t notice if the broadcast booth isn’t at the track, it’s painfully obvious that they’re not there. It was even worse on Friday.
Since this was a standalone event without the Cup Series, the production seemingly had to make do with fewer cameras. In that case, you’re going to miss some things.
Saturday’s race will likely be best remembered for the crash in turn 1 involving Katherine Legge, William Sawalich and Kasey Kahne. At the time the crash happened, The CW was in a side-by-side commercial break.
Viewers saw this crash develop live from Sawalich’s roof cam during the break. It appeared that Sawalich literally drove into the back of Legge’s car, spinning her into Kahne. The secondary contact put Legge into the wall. Unfortunately, the crash happening in real time is unavailable.
This crash has resulted in a lot of discussion on social media. Those comments revealed a deeply divided fan base. Some blamed Sawalich for the crash, while others point-blank blamed Legge and claimed that she shouldn’t have been on the track.
Many of the incidents that occurred on Saturday were only caught via static cameras. You could only barely make out what happened.
Other incidents, such as the mess that was triggered by Christian Eckes failing to come up to speed on a restart, were caught live and comprehensively covered.
There was a fair amount of bad luck. Of the 14 cautions Saturday, four came out during side-by-side breaks, including the first three for cause. You can’t predict when they’re going to show up, so this is just going to happen from time to time.
Racing-wise, Rockingham put on a better show than I thought it would. The footage from testing earlier this year made it look like it was going to be borderline flat-out with no real wear and everyone driving on the bottom. That was not the case.
As early as the Truck race on Friday, the groove had widened out enough so that you could run side-by-side. NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that there was an average of 7.8 passes per lap under green. That’s not bad. There’s no Rockingham equivalent anywhere and Loop Data didn’t exist the last time the series raced there prior to last weekend. It is more than there were last year at Dover Motor Speedway and a little more than Phoenix Raceway, the closest tracks length-wise to Rockingham.
There was plenty of enthusiasm coming from the remote broadcast booth. There was good racing for position on Saturday and The CW showed a decent amount of that. I was not bored watching this race.
With the litany of cautions in the final stage (the race had 14 yellows, tied for the most in any race at Rockingham, including 492-lap Cup races), the broadcast ran very long. The checkered flag flew more than 45 minutes after the scheduled sign-off time.
Despite that, there was some post-race coverage. Viewers got interviews with Jesse Love, Sammy Smith and Parker Retzlaff. There was also a check of the points before The CW left Rockingham.
It should be noted that Love getting disqualified post-race does not affect this broadcast. NASCAR didn’t announce Love’s disqualification until roughly three hours after the race ended. By that time, CW programming for the night was done.
Overall, this was a good race brought down by the fact that the booth wasn’t there. Not being on-site means that you miss so much. It’s more than just not being there to call the race and having that additional vision (assuming that sunshades don’t get in the way), but it’s all the other things that come with being there.
Sure, you can talk to someone on a cell phone (or text them), but it’s not the same as being there in person. You can use all your senses to help convey what’s going on. For example, if someone is burning up their rear-end, you’ll know. It has a very pungent, distinct smell. You’d be able to bring that information to the viewers at home. You can’t do that from a studio in Charlotte.
When the booth was at the track, Carla Metts was assigned to the infield care center for the first few races of the season. That freed up Kim Coon and Dillon Welch to cover additional stories. If Metts’ responsibilities at FOX 46 in Charlotte prohibit her from doing that (remember, she didn’t leave her day job to join The CW’s broadcast team), then they may need to have a sub for certain weekends.
That’s all for this week. Coming up next weekend, Talladega Superspeedway has a tripleheader in store with the Cup Series racing 500 miles on Sunday. This will be the final Cup race on network TV until August. The Xfinity Series and ARCA Menards Series will be on the undercard. Meanwhile, SRO America will visit Circuit of the Americas. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s Jack Link’s 500 in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will cover Friday’s Black’s Tire 200, where it seemed that Carson Hocevar took over the show.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the Frontstretch email 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 Frontstretch 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.
The coverage of the NASCAR Xfinity Series at Rockingham was disappointing. Not having the broadcast booth on-site really affected the quality of the viewing experience. Cameras missed key moments, like the Sawalich-Legge crash, which fans had to piece together from social media. With so many cautions during breaks, it felt like a lot of action was overlooked entirely. Why didn’t the production team prioritize better coverage for such a major racing weekend?
So on point!! I am actually finding CW’s coverage better than FOX — EXCEPT for the stupidity of not having the announcers at the track. FOX is doing it too — and I really question the lack of wisdom NASCAR is demonstrating by allowing this.
For 2 of the yellow flags, CW was in side-by-side coverage. Apparently they can’t cut to the track to cover a wreck, they just keep showing ads. Interminably. When something like that happens on track…waiting to find out what happened is frustrating.
Sounds like they went to the Fox School of NASCAR Broadcasting.
Poor coverage is better than no coverage. There are many, many, fans that can’t access the Xfinity races at all and that is ridiculous.
just wait til nbc, or whomever, takes over for second half of the season. right now you can’t watch any practice or qualifying as they’re on prime.
More people have CW over-the-air channel than have cable.
Not if you live rural and have Dish TV our zip code does not have a CW that broadcasts the races
“Overall, this was a good race” I’m sorry but I have to disagree. Between the non stop cautions and quality of the broadcast I found it anything but a good race. The Xfinity series this year has become a joke with more laps under caution at most races than under green. It’s amazing just how unprofessional the whole Xfinity field has become.
Up until Rockingham I though The CW had been doing a decent job, but Rockingham changed that. The crowning achievement of a poor broadcast was the finish of the race. The booth was saying something about how the race would be over when Love takes the checked flag…after Love had already taken the flag. What a joke.
As usual, Phil’s assessment is spot on. These are nearly always my favorite articles of the week. I enjoyed the race, despite the coverage lacking a bit. I was wondering why the announcers seemed to often be noticing things after I did, but then I figured out they were announcing the race remotely. F1’s US broadcast was handled in this manner back in the day. I didn’t care for it then, and it seems the same limitations hold true today. Too much is missed, and too many delayed reactions. As another poster noted, it was hilarious when they were still announcing the “race” after Love had taken the checkered flag.
As for social media and Katherine Legge, I’m not surprised. People gutted her for being involved in multiple wrecks her first race of the season, but I noticed a distinct lack of venom for Kyle Larson a week later, when he wrecked twice, with the second wreck being due to him mixing it up with the leaders while completely out of contention. Sound familiar? Yet, all the armchair experts were silent. Hmmm…wonder why?
I honestly felt the Legge wreck this week was on both her and Sawalich. She was far enough off the pace she should have just slowed enough to run up in the marbles as the leaders passed, but Sawalich also was overly aggressive, making an assumption about what was in front of him, and initiated the contact. I felt his interview afterwards was a bit childish, laying all the blame on Legge, after he was the one who initiated contact by running over her. I get his view was partially impeded by the car passing her, but it’s not at though a two ton block of metal just randomly teleported onto the track in front of him.
Also, the racing was more enjoyable without a bunch of Cup guys dropping down and stinking up the show. If they didn’t steal points and purse money away from the regulars, I wouldn’t mind this as much.
Glad to see The Rock back in action, and hope Cup returns there. I’d think the Next Gen car would put on a good show there, albeit with aero issues likely making passing the leader a difficult task. Maybe Goodyear could work some tire wear magic.
I thought Rockingham’s surface had the same tire wear issues as Darlington, but I didn’t see the teams changing tires that often this time.
We don’t have a local CW affiliate, so I no longer get to watch the Xfinity series. I kinda miss it, but it is what it is.
Remember WJZY (Fox 46) is owned by the network (Nexstar Communications), which owns stations representing the other four networks. The Charlotte CW affiliate, WCCB, is owned by Beverly Poston, who also owns stations in Columbia, Myrtle Beach,Montgomery, and Jackson (TN) (in Columbia, she owns WOLO, which was notorious during the pre-unified contract era to refuse airing Cup races and showed ACC basketball over all when it was owned by her family — “CCB” call letters reference her father).
Any remote broadcast from NASCAR’s version of “Biggin Hill” in the NASCAR Productions studio is produced by the sanctioning body. The Fox Truck races on site are produced by Fox, not NASCAR. It makes me fear when the roar of the lion “ars gratia artis” comes and only the elite get to watch the races on premium pay from that lion that since they are NASCAR-produced, we may see remotes for those races and also the TNT races, which are also produced by the sanctioning body.
Remember in 2020 during the lockdowns, Fox’s remotes were done at the Steve Byrnes Studio on W. T. Harris Boulevard. These remotes are clearly sanctioning body, which is the problem.
But one thing I’ve noticed with commentator cams in certain series is how those broadcasts could be as good as remove because the lead broadcasters in too many series refuse to watch any action from a window or notes.
While not ideal, remote broadcasts could work fine BUT they need to show the race delayed by some period of time (a few seconds up to maybe a minute?) so the announcers can see and react to on air action accordingly. This would give the announcers and production team a chance to create a more polished product to present to the viewers. The delay would likely be noticeable only if one were listening to radio while watching TV (which I know many like to do) or if you were following the leaderboard online. Otherwise, the fan just watching the TV program would never know.
Pick your poison: real time racing with announcer lag, or slightly delayed telecast that is more polished/seamless. Obviously having the crew physically at the track is ideal, but if they won’t do that then they at least need to do something to help make the finished product better.