The Chicago Street Race is something of a white whale for NASCAR. It’s an attempt to broaden the sport’s audience, but the race has been marked by a certain degree of opposition from the city. The fanbase has been mixed. The atmosphere despises it.
Luckily, NASCAR finished the race on Sunday, July 6, before thunderstorms rained on the parade, but just barely. Thank goodness someone finally got the right idea and moved up the start by three hours, because if they didn’t, Sunday’s race would likely have been cut short due to darkness again.
TV-wise, we’re going to start at the end since that’s the most important moment of the race. The race ended under caution after Cody Ware suffered a brake failure and went head-on into the tire barrier at turn 6 with two laps to go.
The controversy here is why NASCAR waited to throw the caution for 30-plus seconds after the big hit. There are a variety of reasons why this happened. Denny Hamlin noted on his podcast Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin that the race was being officiated remotely from Charlotte. That’s a mistake in its own right, but if so, there are going to be delays.
As noted above, there was a thunderstorm moving in. Had NASCAR immediately thrown the yellow, it would have required an overtime. However, the likely scenario if that occurred is that the race gets red-flagged almost immediately due to lightning. Would NASCAR wait the necessary time, then put the whole field on rain tires for a GWC? I don’t know. Probably not, even though series officials had the time.
Because of that, there’s the theory that NASCAR held the caution for the sheer reason of avoiding overtime and possibly having to call the race early. It comes off as convenient, but NASCAR has already denied this.
As for the coverage of the crash on the broadcast, the announcers didn’t catch it live. TNT cut to it with Ware deep in the barrier a couple of seconds after the crash happened. There were no replays shown or any real attempt to figure out what occurred. Luckily, we know what happened thanks to the in-car cameras on Max.
This shot was never aired on the broadcast. No real update was given on Ware’s condition, which is a travesty. Luckily, Ware walked away from the crash and talked to Frontstretch after the race.
Also, TV is not necessarily the best to show the true ferocity of crashes. A fan right near turn 6 when the crash happened tweeted this video.
During NASCAR Nation Post-Race, Parker Kligerman was not pleased with how NASCAR handled the mess surrounding the Ware crash. I don’t blame him for saying so because it was ridiculous. Kligerman welcomes a discussion about officiating consistency, which fans would like to see. They just wish that it wouldn’t be necessary.
This was not the best day for TNT covering NASCAR. Outside of the finish, a lot of the big stories surrounded the In-Season Challenge. At EchoPark Speedway, it wasn’t that big of a deal on the broadcast due to the big wreck and the fact that 80% of the field was in it. Sunday had that number down to 16 drivers and it felt like a playoff broadcast. That’s not a good thing.
I could link to a dozen or more past critiques where I’ve ranted about the playoffs taking over race broadcasts. I can’t really bring myself to care about this bracket challenge, but I certainly don’t want it dominating the race telecasts. If anything, TNT building it up probably played a role in some of the late-race shenanigans.
TNT interviewed a couple of the duos together during NASCAR Nation Pre-Race. Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace were part of that. It seemed like they tried to build up the rivalry between them for the sake of this contrived competition. Granted, they’ve had run-ins on the track before.
I want to believe that what happened Sunday wouldn’t have occurred without the In-Season Challenge in play. What we have now is a manufactured conflict between the two of them.
The coverage of the whole thing was not the best. You had the live shots of it, then TNT cut to a speed shot and missed the spin that effectively ended Wallace’s race.
We also never saw the incident that took Christopher Bell out of a chance for a top-10 finish. Apparently, he got hit by Austin Hill.
As I watched this race, I thought that the broadcast had the feel of a remote broadcast. It was as if the booth was back in some studio in Charlotte calling the race even though we knew they were on-site in Chicago.
It just seemed to me like no one was really into the race. Reactions seemed delayed and just slow. Now, I understand that it’s a street race and there are a bunch of obstructed views (see the fact that drivers had a bunch of blind spots despite having three spotters for the race), but TNT should have been able to do a better job covering the action.
Post-race coverage was affected heavily by the weather. Had there been no thunderstorm, the broadcasters would have been outside right near Buckingham Fountain behind the start-finish line. Instead, they were inside a temporary building. Nothing wrong with that, given the circumstances.
The race ended right on schedule. Viewers got several interviews on NASCAR Nation Post-Race with drivers such as Hamlin, Bowman and Tyler Reddick. You also had an oddball interview or two, such as the one with Ty Dillon, who was only there because he advanced in the In-Season Challenge.
Given what happened late in the race, the Bowman interview probably came quite a bit later than it should have in the show. I get that it was raining, but it seemed like it was delayed for 20 minutes or more. That said, there was some decent analysis about the race itself on there. There was a lot of back-and-forth about the Bowman-Wallace kerfuffle.
Overall, this race broadcast was a disappointment. Yes, there was some good racing, and TNT actually had a good amount of action for positions during the day. Yet the production just wasn’t up to scratch.
Not having the Radio-style broadcast that NBC had in Chicago for the past two years hurt this broadcast. It’s probably the most beneficial at a place like Grant Park due to the various blind spots that are in play there. Remember, even the spotters had parts of the track that they couldn’t see, leaving the drivers on their own regarding clearing themselves. In the case of Ware’s crash, whoever would have been in that tower would have immediately reacted to the crash.
The focus on the In-Season Challenge was a negative for the race. I’m not a fan of something like that that detracts from the race at large. At worst, TNT legitimately affected what happened Sunday by egging drivers on prior to the race. That is not something that the broadcast should be doing. The announcers are supposed to be reporting on the race, not making the story up themselves.
Yes, the In-Season Challenge lends itself to certain drivers getting more coverage than they would otherwise, but it’s not natural. I’ve spoken for years about how I want NASCAR broadcasts to be more inclusive. I want that to happen naturally, not as a result of a contrivance.
It just goes to show how much of a different production can make. Remember that we have the same broadcast booth on TNT that we had on Amazon Prime Video. A number of other people also stayed on. Two weeks in, though, I’m pretty disappointed.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series makes its annual trip to Sonoma Raceway for the 36th time. Cup drivers will be joined by the NASCAR Xfinity Series and ARCA Menards Series West. Outside of Sonoma, the NTT IndyCar Series will be at Iowa Speedway while IMSA will be at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. TV listings can be found here.
We’ll have a critique of Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350k in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will cover Saturday’s The Loop 110, which is still too short. I’ll also have some AltCast thoughts.
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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.