Charlotte Motor Speedway brought new territory for NASCAR, as the Coca-Cola 600 officially introduced Amazon Prime Video to the NASCAR Cup Series. Now, it is true that practice and qualifying sessions have been on the service since Atlanta Motor Speedway in February (with the exception of All-Star Weekend in North Wilkesboro Speedway), but those broadcasts were produced by FOX Sports. This was the first weekend when Amazon was on its own. Or so I thought it was.
Going into the weekend, we knew that Prime wasn’t going to have full-screen commercial breaks under green. It fulfilled that promise; in fact, it went beyond that.
There were no full-screen commercials at all between the start of the race and the finish, including those under caution. It was good to see and something that NASCAR has never had before. Also, the number of breaks under green was lower in number than we’ve generally had recently. There were nine of them for the whole race, all of which were 150 seconds in length or less.
That said, Amazon Prime Video has one advantage over the regular TV partners. It is not beholden to local interests in any way whatsoever.
On all the other broadcasts, there are set commercial breaks (roughly one per hour) that are reserved for local commercials. Those include small businesses that get space via cable/satellite outlets or local affiliates (for broadcast races), or even just ads for local stations.
In addition, the final 62 laps of the race were completely commercial-free. That constituted nearly the final 100 miles of the race. That was roughly 30-35 minutes without interruption. That is rare and good to see.
Race broadcast-wise, this was an exciting race to watch. Prime took great pains to bring on-track battles to viewers. There was more usage of split-screen coverage on Sunday than I think I saw in the final few weeks of FOX’s coverage combined.
With coverage like that, you’d think that passing was up over last year’s rain-shortened race. Not so fast.
While there were more overall passes than last year, there were 151 more laps. According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, there were only 480 more passes over the full 400-lap distance Sunday night than last year’s 249-lap race. Last year’s race averaged 22.1 passes per green flag lap, while Sunday’s race only averaged 14.3.
Basically, you were treated to a different presentation of the race that made the action look more exciting than what we got last year with FOX. Is that a good thing? If it means that fans enjoy watching the races more, absolutely.
However, there is a bit of a disconnect here. The rare opposite disconnect. Usually, the races look boring on TV, but much better in person. This is a race that fans in person may not have liked all that much, but looked better on TV.
For the Amazon Prime Video and the upcoming TNT/Max portions of the season, you have the trio of Adam Alexander, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte. For Earnhardt, Sunday was his first race in the broadcast booth since the end of 2023, unless you want to count the Red Bull Soap Box Derby stuff that he’s been doing for the Discovery Channel with Mike Bagley.
In his first Cup race back in the booth, we got a lot more of what we’re used to with Earnhardt. He’s excitable up there and that’s real. He’s not putting on airs. If he sees something cool, he gets into it. That isn’t just a TV reference. That’s for everything in his life.
That said, when he gets jacked up, he starts talking a little too fast. Now, that isn’t necessarily a problem for me, but it could be a problem for other people, especially those who are new to the sport.
There was an increase in data from NASCAR Insights on the broadcast. This data has always been available to TV personalities, but hasn’t always been used. For example, Jeff Burton told Frontstretch back in 2018 that he gets a packet of that information every week. He parsed through the information and might have used a tidbit or two in his preparation, but not much. It seems like you’re going to see a little more of that on Amazon Prime Video.
It seems like the push for this is coming from Letarte, which makes sense. Remember that he used to host a NASCAR betting podcast known as Dirty Mo Dough that quietly ended after last season. The information there is likely to be designed around potential betting uses.
The coverage of Denny Hamlin’s fueling issues late in the race was really good. Hamlin was William Byron’s primary competition for much of the race. However, his crew failed to get any fuel from his second dump can into the car on his final stop. That resulted in an extra pit stop that dropped him to a 16th-place finish.
The broadcast did a great job explaining just what happened to cause the issue and how getting the dump can seated correctly is critical to get anything in the tank. Unfortunately, that ruined Hamlin’s night.
There was plenty of post-race coverage on offer under the branding of NASCAR Live Post-Race. That said, the number of interviews (or at least, interview subjects) was rather thin. You had six people interviewed in 50 minutes and a lot of analysis.
One of the biggest takeaways from post-race coverage is that Carl Edwards never met Byron prior to Sunday night. I found that interesting, if only because it seems like the two of them should have met at some point previously during the run-up to this package.
When Edwards retired from driving at the end of 2016, Byron had just completed his lone season in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Edwards didn’t race in the Trucks that year and probably didn’t think about the series much, so I could understand them not meeting back then. I just don’t get how it would be possible for them not to meet, knowing that Edwards was going to be covering Cup this year. It comes off to me as a lack of preparation. Or, at a bare minimum, really curious.
Overall, this was an excellent start for Amazon Prime Video. Every year, when FOX Sports logs off for the year, there’s a desire for a more serious product. We got that Sunday.
The group of eight on-air personalities appears to have been well-picked. The only people I had any worries about were Trevor Bayne and Corey LaJoie. Bayne has done booth and studio work but had no pit reporting experience. I think he’s learning on the fly. His veteran co-workers will be able to help him along.
LaJoie has his podcast, Stacking Pennies, which gives him a fair amount of interviewing experience. He did well in his first time on-air. Better than Bayne in his role.
Honestly, the only strange thing was the whole piece where Letarte hung out with a bunch of puppets.
Going forward, I’d like Prime to put more interviews in its post-race coverage since there’s going to be something like 45 minutes guaranteed every week. Might as well be more inclusive.
Viewers got a dedicated group on-air that is very knowledgeable and brought forth a professional broadcast. Even though Earnhardt and Letarte had never really worked with Alexander before this past weekend, they meshed well. I don’t know if Rick Allen’s mentality rubbed off on them or not, but it’s an NBC-style feel here.
That’s all for this week. Next week is going to be quite busy. NASCAR has a tripleheader at Nashville Superspeedway with the Truck Series Friday night, the NASCAR Xfinity Series on Saturday night and the Cup Series Sunday night. Why all night races? Mainly because Tennessee can be pretty hot this time of year.
Meanwhile, IndyCar will be in Detroit this weekend with the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in support. Finally, Formula 1 will be at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll take a look at the broadcast of Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400 from Nashville. In the Critic’s Annex, we’ll look at the Truck and Xfinity races from Charlotte.
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 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.
Watching the coverage it seemed to me that there was still a decided focus on certain Toyotas and drivers. At the checkered flag the coverage immediately showed the pit crew and then the crew chief, although the last 60 or so laps commercial free from Prime was unexpected and appreciated. I guess that means they had made their money back by then.
My only real gripe is that their pylon changes too fast to be able to look for a particular driver. Very frustrating. If they slow that down it was darn near a 100%.
I agree. Also the pylon need to show the drivers position on the left, like Fox does. The only time it shows their position is when it runs across the top.
I noticed that too. The numbers were there but they were cutoff on the left side of the screen. I wondered if it was just the settings on my TV or if everyone had that issue.
i figured out how to use work prime account. i watched on phone. could not get it to pair on my smart tv. i noticed that prime is the anti-tie and coat group.
kind of reminded me of a combo of fox and nbc.
at least there wasn’t any rain delay to deal with.
Jr. does seem to get excited a lot, but you can tell it’s genuine and that he really is a racing fan. I think Jr. and Latarte work well together, likely because of their years racing together. Latarte is good on the technical side, while Jr. really knows the drivers and NASCAR racing in general. LaJoi seemed completely out of place and I didn’t care for Edwards on air personality either. Bayne couldn’t been very effective, I didn’t even realize he was a pit reporter, though I think Kim Coon did a good job in the pits. Overall I was pleased with Amazon’s first NASCAR broadcast.
The Fox broadcast of the Indy 500 was okay, and probably better than most of their NASCAR broadcasts. The one weak spot was Jamie Little. I didn’t think it was possible for her to get any worse, but she quickly proved me wrong. After McLaughlin’s parade lap crash she asked the team if they were going to be able to repair the car. The left front suspension was torn off, there was no repairing it. I find it hard to believe the best women the networks can find to cover racing are Jamie Little and Danica Patrick.
I prefer the Fox broadcast team.
I prefer anything over Dale Jr, but I’ll survive.
I was surprised to find that I could fast forward 10 seconds at at time, after I joined the pre-race about 10 mins late. That allowed me to skip the first round of commercials.
The start was so great that 12 laps in they were showing Larson’s crash at Indy. Not as good at showing the battles around the track as CW ….but it is their first attempt.
Signed up for Prime free trial. Not impressed with streaming as it is not as good as normal broadcast. It was buffering and not as in focus as the regular TV. Had to shutdown wifi on laptop. I used ROKU for the video.
I had no issues at all with Prime.
They have lost this life long NASCAR Cup fan. Sad that this is just another thing to leave the the access to racing to just a few.
PRN did a great broadcast!
Good point about using the radio to follow race. I have prime so we could watch but I wasn’t that interested.
If Prime is the way NASCAR is going……….after 50 years……I’m out!
Another great article by Phil. This is my favorite sports read nearly every week.
I know a bunch of people are upset that Amazon got some of the races this year, but this is the direction the world is headed. Some NFL games (including at least one playoff game) are streaming exclusives. I won’t get into the debate as to what’s “good” for NASCAR. No one will change anyone’s mind here.
I’ve been a cup fan for 40+ years, and this was the best NASCAR broadcast I’ve seen, full stop.
It appears some viewers had buffering issues, but my experience was rock solid resolution as well as frame rate, from start to finish. Also appears some had issues with the broadcast being zoomed in, cutting off the driver positions on the TV pylon. I did not experience this, using a Roku Ultra via HDMI to a newer Sony TV. Picture quality was gorgeous, with less signal compression than I tend to see on other networks, especially CW.
Overall, I’d give this debut an A+. As Phil noted, they went out of their way to show the action, whether it was for the lead, or for 15th position. There were no mysteries when cars had issues. All were covered, analyzed, and reported in a timely fashion. The booth commentary flowed smoothly, informatively, and naturally. There was no comedy relief a la Bowyer, yet the broadcast wasn’t boring or rigid. I had no use for the secondary desk with Edwards and Lajoie, but then again, I never have much use for this sort of thing. I recognize this isn’t aimed toward me as a viewer. That said, it never got in the way of the action, and I suppose it allowed the primary broadcasters a bit of time for restroom breaks, etc.
My one and only nitpick was the size of the car positions on the TV pylon. They were small to the point I had to really look hard to read them, despite having a large TV. Easy fix, and even if not, I’ll take that minor shortcoming any day, if it comes with such a premium broadcast
Amazon had a TON of cameras (I saw it reported as 70 total), which meant nearly anything that happened had a camera on it. And again, the quality of the cameras was top notch, whereas other broadcasts clearly have some poor cameras for secondary purposes.
I’m no Amazon fan boy…I’m too old to “identify” with any service, knowing their sole purpose is to make money. But ya know what, if they can keep up this level of coverage, I’m more than willing to continue paying for their services.
They made NASCAR seem like a big deal. Even bigger than it probably is. And though I know having these five races on Amazon will cost NASCAR some fans, I suspect it will result in a net gain overall, much as the F1 documentaries on Netflix have broadened that sport’s fan base in the US.