If there is a road course race that has been hurt the most by the creation of stages, it is likely Sonoma Raceway. The stages have all but killed the pit strategy. The plan now is to pit right before the end of the first two stages, then pit sometime in the middle of the final stage to get to the end.
Then, they repaved the track last year. And they didn’t do a good job.
While there weren’t any problems with the surface during last year’s NASCAR weekend, the SRO America weekend early last year was substantially altered due to the new surface coming up during a paid test session.
This is a screen-capped tweet of an Instagram live post from Corey Lewis, who encountered this bit of nastiness near the pit-in where the track dips. The track was closed to racecars and nearly the entire next day was spent fixing the track surface so the weekend could continue.
Since last year, it appears that Sonoma has had more issues with its asphalt. As a result, the track put down sealer in a number of spots to keep the surface from coming up.
That fundamentally changed the race that we got because it made the track very slippery in spots. That resulted in drivers dropping wheels into the dirt, which only made the track more slippery. The 90° weather exacerbated things.
It ended up being a pretty big storyline on the broadcast on Sunday (July 13), as seemingly no one successfully planned for the traction level that the track had. That meant that there was a little more unexpected action.
NASCAR Nation Pre-Race was light on content on Sunday. There was pre-race analysis, but not much in the way of driver interviews. Likely the most important one that aired was the one with Cody Ware. Here, Ware described the terrible incident that he had in Grant Park and how the Next Gen car protected him. The show didn’t truly preview the race or even the In-Season Challenge.
Only one of the four matchups (the Alex Bowman–Ty Dillon one) was given any airtime on the show. Of course, that was the one settled by a bump-and-run.
The start of the race wasn’t the best for TNT Sports. First off, the announcers failed to get through the entire starting lineup before the green flag came out. That seemed inexcusable for a road course. It’s the kind of thing you’d see in the 1980s.
Also, there were some audio level issues. The broadcast booth appeared to be too quiet and almost could not be heard over the cars at times. While I’m pretty sure that some of you reading this might like that, it is far from ideal. That was eventually fixed as the race continued.
Much of this race took on a “Shane van Gisbergen versus the field” feel as he was the odds-on favorite at nearly even money when the race started. The first half of the race was all green except for the stage breaks. There wasn’t all that much in the way of racing for position.
Most of the good stuff that fans come to broadcasts to see happened in the last quarter of the race.
During the afternoon, there was an altercation between Brad Keselowski and Ty Gibbs’ pit crews after Gibbs made contact with one of the wheels carried by one of Keselowski’s crewmembers. This happened during a commercial on TNT and was not covered for a few minutes. We eventually got some replays that explained what happened.
Speaking of Ware, he lost his right rear tire on lap 95, which brought out a caution. TNT caught that issue live. The broadcast also had great coverage of the complete nightmare of a pit stop that directly led to the wheel coming off. Just a communication nightmare that will lead to a couple of people getting an unpaid vacation later this week.
Post-race coverage was fairly substantial, but not all that inclusive. Viewers got a half-dozen interviews in what seemed like 40 minutes. Maybe it’s just me, but TNT should reorganize the post-race coverage and focus more on the interviews early on in the show. I don’t want to wait 30 minutes to hear from Chase Elliott, who finished third.
Overall, this wasn’t the most exciting race to watch. Was it solely because of van Gisbergen kicking butt? I doubt it. It’s almost like there just wasn’t much to watch during the race. The stages are to blame to a certain extent.
Do I think TNT Sports did its best to find action for viewers? Not really. When you have a situation where there isn’t all that much action at the front of the field, you have to hunt to find it. The broadcast wasn’t capable of hunting like it needed to.
It’s a shame. You have a good booth that works well together, but the production is letting the broadcasters down. Last week on The Dale Jr. Download, Dale Earnhardt Jr. talked about how the production for TNT is an in-house team as opposed to Amazon Prime Video, which used a lot of people from NBC Sports.
There are a lot of new people involved in these broadcasts, and the inexperience is showing. Only having five chances at it isn’t going to help them improve much. I do not doubt that they’ll be discussing this broadcast and how to improve for Dover Motor Speedway this week, but at this point, I’m looking more toward next year for them. If the production crew doesn’t get any reps prior to the start of TNT’s summer series next year, they’re effectively going to go in cold again.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, NASCAR returns to Dover for a tripleheader weekend. The NASCAR Cup Series will be joined by the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series in a combination race with the ARCA Menards Series East. The NTT IndyCar Series will be at Exhibition Place in Toronto, while SRO America returns to action at VIR. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll talk about the AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 broadcast from Dover, a likely very warm July race on the concrete. The Critic’s Annex will cover Saturday’s Pit Boss/FoodMaxx 250k.
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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.