As you know, NASCAR made some history last weekend. The NASCAR Cup Series had its first international points race since 1958. It was also its first-ever visit to Mexico. The NASCAR Xfinity Series had visited four times previously, but on a different configuration that did not go through the Foro Sol. While it’s not the centerpiece of the Amazon Prime Video portion of the schedule, it was very important to NASCAR.
Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is the most notable racetrack in Mexico, the host of the Grand Prix of Mexico intermittently since 1963. Racing through the Foro Sol is not originally a Formula One idea. In fact, it was CART in 2002 that did it first.
The track is named for Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez, two of Mexico’s greatest racers. On NASCAR Live, an animated piece about the brothers aired. Quite simply, they were very skilled as racers and had very diverse skills. Pedro, in particular, won in Formula 1, won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, competed in NASCAR Grand National races and more before dying in a crash at the Norisring in 1971.
I thought the piece was nice. I’d argue that few fans watching the race in the United States knew much about the men for whom the track was named, and why not learn something? Unfortunately, the Rodriguez brothers came into motorsports in an especially dangerous period where death always seemed to be right around the corner.
Naturally, a lot of the focus this past weekend was on Daniel Suarez. Being the only Mexican racer in the Cup Series, it’s a big deal that he got to race in front of his countrymen. Another feature allowed Suarez to explain this significance in detail…in between checking out some grub.
I get the extra focus outside of the race on Suarez. It was clear that he was the prohibitive favorite of the fans at the track. NASCAR’s data indicated that 90% of the fans at the track were from within Mexico and 44% were locals to Mexico City. Just check the sound at the beginning of stage two when Suarez briefly took the lead from Michael McDowell on the restart. You knew who they were pulling for.
Despite that, Amazon Prime Video just isn’t doing a good enough job of previewing these races. Why does the most relevant information previewing the race tend to come from Steve Letarte talking to puppets? It’s so weird.
The race itself was sketchy. When I was prepping NASCAR on TV This Week Thursday, I saw substantially different weather forecasts for the weekend. Normally, I check a number of local TV affiliates to put together a weather outlook for you. I couldn’t do that for Mexico City. A couple of forecasts I saw for Sunday made it look like it was going to be dry. One indicated a decent chance of rain. Guess what we got.
I had no idea what to expect with the rain. No one had practiced in it. I’d never seen a race from the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in the rain. Heck, none of the Formula 1 races there have ever had a hint of rain.
Knowing what we know now, I have no idea why NASCAR started the race the way it did. Officials might as well have waived off the start and allowed everyone to switch tires like they did once at Circuit of the Americas. Better yet, don’t throw it at all and let the teams choose when to pit for wet tires. As it stands, NASCAR didn’t make it mandatory to stop, meaning that Austin Cindric and Chris Buescher chose to stay out.
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is well-known for being bumpy due to shifting soils. In the rain, that made me think that you could have seen a lot of wheel-hopping or puddling. The puddling didn’t come to pass, but saw Kyle Busch wipe out under braking.
Busch indicated afterward that he tried to brake for turn 1, and his car just didn’t want to stop. He described it as like being on ice. He eventually chose to spin it out and took out a number of drivers rather than drive headlong into them.
Racing in Mexico City on Sunday (June 15) was fairly competitive. Prime Video did a decent job of bringing that action to viewers. While Shane van Gisbergen more or less stunk up the show while feeling “rubbish,” there was plenty of action to be had.
That said, it became significantly harder to move up once the track dried out. Take Ty Gibbs for example. He was realistically van Gisbergen’s biggest rival on Sunday and seemed to have equal pace. Then, Gibbs got burned by the final caution of the race for Carson Hocevar’s car spin before he could make his final stop.
Gibbs ended up just outside of the top 10 for the restart with 32 laps to catch van Gisbergen. He ended up 40 seconds behind him at the finish, having gotten up to ninth, then dropped back to 11th.
The conditions on Sunday made it fairly difficult for the broadcast to show what the tire wear was truly like on the slick tires. It was unclear whether certain drivers were harder on their tires and losing pace. What was clear was that once you got 15 laps into a run, no one could run with van Gisbergen. The man was a second a lap faster than anybody else.
The stark difference in pace between van Gisbergen and the entire rest of the field threw everyone for a loop. The broadcast knew van Gisbergen was good on a road course. He’d already won the first Cup race on the streets in Chicago and won three NASCAR Xfinity Series road races. The announcers revealed that van Gisbergen had recently hit up Max Verstappen for advice on the place (while the circuit is slightly different, Verstappen has five wins there). You got to love the Red Bull synergy.
There were a couple of technical issues here. For example, the broadcast showed van Gisbergen’s in-car cameras/footwork and failed to match it to the actual race footage being shown. That hadn’t been an issue earlier in the race, so I’m not sure what happened there.
NASCAR had a podium ceremony in Mexico City, but we didn’t really see it. This has been a thing every time NASCAR has done it. Have the ceremony, then have the broadcast ignore it. I don’t get it. It’s not like you have to pay rights fees to air a national anthem.
Post-race coverage was pretty typical compared to what we’ve seen over the past month. We got plenty of analysis and burnout ratings, but not as many interviews as I would have liked, given that there was nearly an hour of post-race coverage.
There was an interesting statement from Letarte about how he was upset about Kyle Larson coming back out after getting wrapped up in Busch’s wreck to get the Xfinity Fastest Lap. I have no problem with what Larson and Hendrick Motorsports did, regardless of the fact that he was 42 laps down. It’s no different than what we saw over the past few years in Formula 1 with teams making late pit stops to try to get the extra point.
Looking back, the situation that presented itself Sunday (and to a lesser extent, Saturday) made it impossible to truly quantify how good van Gisbergen was going into the race. You knew he was going to be good, but this good? Even with the expanded schedule this past weekend, there’s still not enough track time to truly show who is the best prior to the race.
I enjoyed the race and was thankful for the action that we got later in the race because if the broadcast focused solely on van Gisbergen when he was running off and hiding, it would have been pretty boring. That said, I expected more out of the trip to Mexico City.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is another busy one. NASCAR has a tripleheader at Pocono Raceway, where a big crowd is expected. The NTT IndyCar Series will be at Road America, while IMSA is at Watkins Glen International for the Sahlen’s Six Hours at the Glen. Finally, the ARCA Menards Series visits its smallest track, Elko Speedway. TV listings can be found here.
We’ll have a recap of Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of The Great American Gateway 400 from Pocono in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. For the Critic’s Annex, we’ll cover The Chilango 150 for the Xfinity Series.
If you would like to contact Amazon Prime Video about the race, go to the link for Sunday night’s race, click on the “Send us feedback” link at the bottom of the page and leave your feedback there. To contact either FOX Sports or NBC Sports, 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.