In recent years, the Brickyard 400 has come into vogue as NASCAR’s fourth crown jewel event, replacing Talladega Superspeedway. Honestly, Talladega probably only got that spot due to Winston sponsoring the spring race there until 1997.
Regardless, Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a big deal for drivers and teams. For fans, maybe not so much. The place is designed for the Indianapolis 500 and pretty much anything that’s not the Indianapolis 500 will look empty there.
On Sunday, July 27, you had multiple storylines in play. One was the NASCAR In-Season Challenge finale, a battle between Ty Dillon and Ty Gibbs for supremacy. Another was that Indianapolis marks the final race of the TNT portion of the season. You also had the battle for the win.
For as prestigious as Indy is, the track has struggled to put on decent races in the past. Passing is tough there and the Next Gen car makes it worse because you can’t really follow very well.
Compared to the 2024 race, Sunday’s event had four fewer cautions. The field is naturally going to spread out, but when you have a situation where the rules seemingly discourage passing, it’s not going to make for the most exciting race to watch.
There were no real battles for the lead all day Sunday. The only lead changes that occurred on the track happened when Denny Hamlin beat Kyle Larson to the line on a restart, then Larson got him back 10 seconds later.
For the most part, if you were able to get the lead, you could pull away. Technically, Bubba Wallace was the exception to the rule, but that was mostly due to fuel mileage.
Let’s face it. This is not a recipe for a great race to watch. TNT had to find another strategy to make the race broadcast exciting. Ultimately, that ended up being the varying pit strategies. The broadcasters were probably happy that Ross Chastain crashed on lap 18 to bring out the first yellow and get the split strategy underway.
With the split strategy, you saw different drivers at the front of the field. Without the split, Chase Briscoe likely would have dominated for quite a bit more than he did early on. He still would have dropped back since his car was apparently set up to lead and when he got back in the pack, he struggled.
The In-Season Challenge battle didn’t get all that much screen time on Sunday. Both drivers were interviewed during NASCAR Nation Pre-Race and sounded fairly confident, but they were never around each other all day. For lack of better words, Ty Dillon came back down to earth Sunday.
The No. 10 Chevrolet spent most of the race hovering around 30th. He was never a realistic challenger to Gibbs. The competition was over on lap 56. That was when a chain reaction on a restart saw Dillon run into the back of Riley Herbst and damage the front end of his Chevy.
Granted, Ty Dillon got off much better than Austin Dillon (eliminated on the spot) and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but the challenge was still over. It wasn’t long before Ty Dillon was three laps down while Gibbs was comfortably ahead. The whole storyline was a dud.
Another issue on Sunday was tires. Not so much wear because it wasn’t all that perceptible, but the potential for cut tires. For instance, Austin Cindric cut his right rear tire while leading the race on lap 84. Later on, Joey Logano also had a failure while in line to take the lead on lap 134. That ended up effectively being the pass for the win.
Ultimately, this was a miss on TNT’s part. Cut tires were an issue last year, so the broadcast should have looked into the issue a little more. While it is possible that minute pieces of debris (a sliver of carbon fiber from a diffuser, a bolt, etc.) could cause those issues, low tire pressure was more likely to be to blame.
There’s also the fact that there was a small issue with the track itself on Saturday, exiting turn 2. Repairs were made, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that just a little bump could cause issues.
The broadcast never really reported on the root causes of the failures, just the failures themselves. These types of failures have happened this season. Nashville Superspeedway comes to mind. For a broadcast to be decent, you have to go that extra mile.
After Logano had his tire failure, Wallace ended up with the biggest lead anyone had all day when the sequence ended. Had it not rained, the finish wouldn’t have been as exciting, but he still would have won it.
Post-race coverage was below average. The late rain delay all but put the broadcast on schedule (it was running a little ahead before the rain). Viewers got plenty of coverage with Wallace and Gibbs. Interview-wise, it was rather thin as only a few people were interviewed despite plenty of time for coverage.
For Sunday, this was a rather disappointing race. With the absence of good racing that fans crave, you have to deviate and move to different topics to make the race more exciting. The announcers just didn’t seem to be able to make this exciting. Maybe it was better if you were there in the stands, but I’m not sure since the sight lines are notoriously tricky at IMS.
Honestly, Sunday’s race is more of the same that we’ve seen this year from TNT. A lot of teething issues from a production staff that had never worked together prior to EchoPark Speedway. Some of the people behind the scenes have years of experience, while others are working at NASCAR races for the first time. Others have experience, but have been away covering other sports for a decade or more.
The on-air crew is the best part of TNT’s presentation. Adam Alexander, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte have been working together since Charlotte Motor Speedway in May and they have a good repartee in the booth. Earnhardt Jr. sat out the entire 2024 season in the booth after his NBC contract expired and returned like nothing happened.
Alexander’s scheduled to call 43 races this year and it shows. He’s very comfortable up there at the moment and works well with Earnhardt Jr. and Letarte. Letarte seemingly wasn’t given as much to work with at TNT as he got with Amazon, but still provided good analysis.
The infield crew was solid in their own right. Jamie McMurray and Parker Kligerman were pretty decent on NASCAR Nation Pre-Race and NASCAR Nation Post-Race, while Shannon Spake was decent in her hosting role, which was her first at-track role in more than a decade. As for Mamba Smith, if you were primarily watching the regular broadcasts, you never saw much of him. He was mostly on the In-Season Challenge AltCasts.
Basically, what we have is a solid on-air crew that was being let down from week to week. Some of those things were out of their control, like the booth setup in Grant Park that effectively made it a remote broadcast.
The planning for the broadcasts needs to be improved for 2026. Luckily, there are people in place who can make the necessary improvements. The problem is, some of the people involved need more reps and I’m not sure where they’re going to get those reps.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend sees NASCAR make the trip out to Iowa Speedway for the Iowa Corn 350. The Cup Series will headline with the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series on the undercard. Formula 1 will be at the Hungaroring for its final race before the summer break. IMSA will be at Road America as well. TV listings can be found here.
This weekend will mark the season debut for NBC Sports in NASCAR…sort of. In reality, NBC Sports’ signatures were all over Amazon Prime Video’s five-race stint earlier this year. Leigh Diffey will be back on play-by-play for the remainder of the year.
For next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll have a critique of the Iowa Corn 350 broadcast. The Critic’s Annex will be on Saturday’s Pennzoil 250, with an emphasis on the Aric Almirola–Austin Hill shenanigans.
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.