Dover Motor Speedway was a complete wild card on Sunday, July 20. Due to rain washing out both practice and qualifying Saturday, none of the NASCAR Cup Series teams ventured onto the track before the race. Add in a new tire that had not been tested at Dover, and you had a lot of unknowns entering the race.
Having watched a decent amount of the NASCAR Channel last week, I didn’t think that Sunday’s race looked all that different from 2024. It ended up with fewer competitive lead changes than last year. Chase Elliott’s pass of Chase Briscoe on lap 14 was the only official lead change that took place under green outside of a restart.
I’m not sure whether the new tire helped things at all. The track took a lot of rubber during the race, but it did last year when the race was in April. Even with the hot weather, Denny Hamlin still won the race on 70+ lap tires. He also set the fastest lap of the race on the final lap.
Racing-wise, this wasn’t the most exciting race to watch. The focus seemed to be pretty heavily on the front of the field, and there just wasn’t much happening up there. Elliott had much of the race under control.
The In-Season Challenge continues to not get that much coverage on the broadcast, even though it was down to four drivers. You saw an interview with one of the matchups during NASCAR Nation Pre-Race and some check-ins during the race, but nothing substantial. It’s been surprisingly restrained for the whole of TNT Sports’ schedule. The AltCast is obviously another story.
The broadcast continues to lack the touches that I want to see out of a broadcast. For example, Erik Jones smacked the wall toward the end of stage one. Dale Earnhardt Jr. noticed immediately and pointed it out, but the coverage did not gravitate to Jones. The cameras only found him right before he hit the wall a second time.
Also, there was a screw-up in the starting lineup where JJ Yeley’s picture was used for Shane van Gisbergen. Yes, Yeley was in the race, but that’s pretty bad.
Speaking of Yeley, he apparently dropped out due to fatigue. Not sure what happened there.
Late in Sunday’s race, it started raining during a caution that flew due to Ross Chastain crashing. NASCAR chose to red flag the race with 14 laps to go.
With it being that close to the finish, I was a little surprised that NASCAR chose to dry the track and complete the race. TNT had footage of track employees carrying the (likely) heavy Miles the Monster trophy to the alternate victory lane site during the stoppage in nothing short of a driving rain to prepare for an early finish. Of course, that didn’t happen.
During the 56-minute red flag, TNT Sports did a few interviews. We heard from the main contenders (Hamlin, Elliott, Christopher Bell) and drivers in the In-Season Challenge (John Hunter Nemechek, Tyler Reddick).
Afterward, the race resumed. Not even a lap after the restart, Bell spun racing Hamlin for the lead.
Now, this incident was always going to be a big deal. Heck, Bell wiped out going for the lead for the second time Sunday. This wreck also swung the point standings as William Byron was involved and knocked out of the race.
Under normal circumstances, that would have been a big deal. Even with the playoffs, leading the points means something. While yes, the broadcast mentioned Byron was in the crash, there was no real mention made of him falling out of the race before it ended. I didn’t like that.
Despite the race ending more than an hour late, there was still plenty of post-race coverage. Viewers got a number of driver interviews and post-race analysis. There was also a preview of the finals of the In-Season Challenge between Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon for this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
An informal poll on the broadcast indicated that 64% of voters thought Dillon could pull it off this weekend. I don’t know what to think about that. Do they really think that? Or is it a collective sarcasm from the voters?
Overall, much like at Sonoma Raceway, this was really not a very exciting race to watch. There were a couple of moments in which there was good action, like on the last restart with Hamlin and Briscoe. However, the rest of the race wasn’t all that special. Heck, the old school Dover races I saw on NASCAR Channel when the place was still asphalt were better, even though there were times when only a couple of cars were on the lead lap.
TNT Sports needs to be more inclusive on its broadcasts. That way, you don’t end up with lap after lap of nothing much going on because you have that queued up and ready to go.
Unfortunately, a five-week schedule isn’t enough time to get a new NASCAR race production crew up to speed. Amazon Prime Video didn’t really have to worry about that because it primarily used NBC Sports production for its portion of the schedule. My hope is that some of the newer people find ways to get more racing production reps outside of the TNT Sports portion of the season in order to improve their skills.
If there’s one thing that I know about race broadcast production after writing this column since 2009, it is that there are a lot of moving parts on a telecast. It’s really difficult to do it cold. You only truly learn with experience and a lot of the people on these broadcasts right now are just not that experienced with NASCAR broadcasts. I hope it’ll get better.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis. The NASCAR Cup Series will be there along with the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Meanwhile, eight miles away at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the ARCA Menards Series will have a doubleheader Friday. Outside of NASCAR, the NTT IndyCar Series will be at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, while Formula 1 will be at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll cover the Brickyard 400 presented by PPG broadcast, which will feature Cookie Monster as the grand marshal. I’m excited to see what that would look like.
Since Indianapolis is also the final race of the year for TNT Sports, we’ll review its five-race series of broadcasts. We’ll discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how it could improve in 2026.
In The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter, we’re going to look at FOX Sports’ broadcast of the General Tire 150 for ARCA from Dover.
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.