Sunday (Aug. 3) at Iowa Speedway marked the return of NBC Sports to the NASCAR Cup Series. Leigh Diffey is back in the broadcast booth for the remainder of the season. The on-air crew is more or less unchanged from last year, but there are some changes.
Likely the most obvious change is that NBC Sports has a new graphics package, replacing the previous setup that had been in use since 2015. Clearly, the Amazon Prime Video portion of the season was a dry run for this.
Compared to what we had back in May and June, it’s more legible now. The pylon has a bigger type size, which will benefit viewers. If you watched the Prime races on a smaller screen, it could have been difficult to make things out at times.
Unfortunately, the new setup is bigger and wider than what Prime had previously. On my screen, the pylon was partially cut off by the side of the screen. I can’t speak for everyone here, but that’s not a good look.
Countdown to Green struck me as very brief. We got to hear from some of the drivers, but there was a technical issue where you couldn’t hear any of the analysts at first. Thankfully, that was fixed.
I’m not sure where Carson Hocevar’s “Hurricane Hocevar” nickname came from. I heard it prior to Sunday. Is that something that Diffey came up with on his own? It’s an apt statement.
One of the biggest stories that came out of the race is the fact that Hocevar’s relationship with the garage continues to deteriorate. Or, it was already bad and is still bad.
Frontstretch spoke to Hocevar after the race. Then, Zane Smith’s crew chief, Ryan Bergenty, angrily confronted Hocevar.
This seems to be happening regularly these days. Hocevar has lost the benefit of the doubt. If he gets loose and washes up into someone, it’s construed as if he just took someone out. That’s rough. At this point, it’s going to be years before he’ll be able to get over this reputation.
Racing-wise, Iowa was always going to be tough. It’s a shorter track with the Next Gen car, which doesn’t race that well on shorter tracks. That said, NBC Sports did a decent job trying to find action to show viewers. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t all that much on offer, especially early in the race.
Passing in general was down this year compared to last year. The increase in cautions (12 in all) likely didn’t help. For the most part, this wasn’t that exciting.
There was heavy usage of the blimp cam on Sunday, especially late in the race. This was an interesting choice, knowing that Iowa is a seven-eighths-of-a-mile track. It’s not that long, and there isn’t much in the infield that could obstruct views, so it likely really wasn’t necessary.
The sheer number of cautions in the final 160 laps Sunday is the only reason that William Byron won the race. He pitted during the Ty Dillon caution prior to the end of stage two and went the distance from there.
The final portion of the race saw NBC Sports use its fuel graphics in the pylon to try to predict whether Byron would make it to the finish. I’m not sure where the broadcast got its information from. Is that simply an estimate based on how long the dump can(s) were engaged, along with a constant number that represents fuel flow from the cans?
Regardless, Byron and Hendrick Motorsports were sweating bullets in the final laps as it was indicated with nine laps to go that Byron only had 4% of his fuel remaining. Somehow, he not only got to the finish with that fuel but had enough to do a burnout as well. NBC may need to go back to the drawing board to determine fuel mileage for the broadcasts. That is something that was done better during the Amazon portion of the season.
Post-race coverage ran a little late because of the 12 cautions. Viewers got a decent amount of post-race interviews, in addition to post-race analysis.
As compared to the TNT portion of the season, NBC brought viewers interviews earlier. We didn’t have to wait 30 minutes to hear from second-place finisher Chase Briscoe. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s an improvement from what we’ve had the past few weeks.
My takeaway from Sunday was that the broadcast was rather choppy. It’s like everyone had to get back in the swing of things. That strikes me as odd since that’s never really been a problem in the past with NBC Sports. Also, it’s not necessarily like they haven’t done races since November. A number of the production staffers were involved with the Amazon broadcasts that finished in June.
Next weekend at Watkins Glen International will be a very different broadcast, given the fact that they’ll be on a road course. There could be shenanigans again. Heck, we might be looking at Hocevar in the playoffs at this time next week (remember, he was leading with a couple of laps to go last year).
Something else that was rather surprising to me is the fact that Sunday’s race was not available on Peacock. I don’t understand this strategy.
As you may remember, NBC Sports could only put four races a year on Peacock under the previous TV deal. They were forced to pick and choose which ones would be there. In recent years, it would typically be Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway, the Chicago street course and Phoenix Raceway.
That whole situation was mainly because the previous TV deal pre-dated the creation of Peacock and much of TV streaming. There isn’t an excuse now. There’s no way that NBC Sports is not hurting itself by not having all the races available on Peacock.
This is worse than the Warner Bros. Discovery portion of the season that just finished. HBO Max streamed the races, but didn’t make the broadcasts available for re-watching.
Finally, I must refer to John Kernan’s comments about not liking Diffey in the broadcast booth because of his Australian accent. That’s bush league at best, and it saddens me to hear it.
Diffey has mentioned in the past that his accent may have cost him opportunities to broadcast NASCAR races. Since then, networks have changed their minds on the matter.
Diffey can be an acquired taste on play-by-play, regardless of what he’s broadcasting. My mother told me in the past that she finds him a little annoying. That said, Diffey made this race more exciting than it would have been otherwise.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, NASCAR will have a quadruple-header at Watkins Glen. Friday will be a doubleheader with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the ARCA Menards Series. The NASCAR Xfinity Series races Saturday and the NASCAR Cup Series Sunday. Meanwhile, the NTT IndyCar Series will be in Portland. TV listings can be found here.
We will be back with a critique of the Go Bowling at the Glen broadcast in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex will cover Sunday’s Motul SportsCar Grand Prix at Road America, which I covered on-site for Frontstretch.
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.