In recent years, NASCAR Cup Series races at Richmond Raceway have been tricky. The pavement is now 21 years old and the groove can expand substantially. However, the pace is down significantly and passing has been very difficult.
As a result, most fans weren’t looking forward to this race on Saturday (Aug. 16). What we ultimately got was still very much a long-run race. Despite that, it was much better than we’ve seen in recent years. And no shenanigans.
With this being the penultimate race of the regular season, you started seeing the coverage around the cut line increase during Countdown to Green. As a result, the drivers you heard from prior to the race were people such as Ryan Preece, Chris Buescher and Kyle Busch. However, you didn’t hear all that much about these drivers in the race itself. Busch is the exception to the rule since he sparked the race’s biggest wreck.
That kind of coverage tends to clutter race broadcasts and detract from what’s happening on the track. There were only a couple of real point checks during the race.
Preece led early on since he started on the pole, but you never heard much out of him after the end of stage one. Buescher was nowhere most of the night and ended up 30th.
Probably the strangest moment of the broadcast happened before the green flag even came out. NBC Sports intercepted a radio conversation that made it sound like Alex Bowman was going to have to drop to the rear for “delaying the start of the race” to adjust his mirror, then reported it as fact. That was not true, as Jeff Gluck noted.
That’s a whoopsies. The broadcasters were a little too quick to report and got burned. You have to be careful with things like that.
In the race itself, the big story of the night was tire wear, something that really didn’t get discussed much prior to the race. Unlike last year, when NASCAR had a full option tire setup for this race, teams ran what was the option tire on the right side with a harder left-side compound.
The result was increased tire wear and a lot more passing. Granted, quite a bit of the passing was due to pit strategies, but this was a far more exciting race to watch compared to last year. NBC Sports is generally pretty good when it comes to covering strategies, and Saturday night was no exception. The announcers did a great job explaining the various strategies that were in play.
You also got good coverage of the various pit sequences under green and the issues that occurred during them. The most notable instance was when Bubba Wallace lost his left-front wheel on pit road on lap 292, ruining what probably would have been a top-five finish.
The coverage didn’t show a specific issue on the stop that led to the lost tire. It just seemed like the crew rushed too much to get Wallace back out there. As a result, the tire changer was not able to get the lug tight. While Wallace was lucky to have Chase Briscoe’s crew reattach the wheel for him, the lost time and the additional pass-through penalty killed his race.
Caution-wise, the only non-stage yellows came in a 20-lap stretch near halfway. The biggest of those incidents saw Chase Elliott crash out and clinched the regular season championship for William Byron.
NBC Sports had this incident covered. Busch was very aggressive on the restart and had contact with Ross Chastain and Brad Keselowski exiting turn 2. He then had contact with Briscoe that resulted in the pileup.
Looking back, the whole incident doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like Busch thought there was going to be retaliation from either Chastain or Keselowski and gunned it into turn 3, only to wipe out Briscoe.
In last year’s critique of this broadcast, I noted that Austin Dillon could have had the greatest victory of his career if he hadn’t stooped to complete lunacy. Saturday night is the greatest victory of his career.
Regarding racing for position, there was a good amount of it. NBC Sports did a decent job in bringing that action to viewers but didn’t do the best job in showing how drivers were moving up through the field.
For example, Joey Logano finished fourth Saturday night after starting at the rear of the field. That’s quite the accomplishment. Do I have an idea of how he did it? Not really. He made some hay early on, but other than that, I’m at a loss.
This is why I always stress inclusiveness in race broadcasts. That allows you to pick up additional race stories along the line. Otherwise, you could be dependent on whatever was discussed on your Tuesday conference calls or whatever was discussed at the race day production meeting.
Post-race coverage was pretty decent. Viewers got interviews with the top seven finishers, plus Byron since he clinched the regular season title. There was no trophy celebration as NASCAR is holding that for Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway. There was also plenty of post-race analysis, as well.
Overall, I enjoyed the broadcast. The race itself was quite a bit better than what we’ve had for the first couple of weeks of NBC Sports’ portion of the season. That allowed Leigh Diffey, Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte to have a little more to work with.
The strategy may have dominated the broadcast a little too much. That meant that a lot of moment was missed (see the earlier comment on how Logano got to fourth). That’s something that NBC Sports will need to be cognizant of. Maybe not this weekend, but once we get to Darlington Raceway, Kansas Speedway and races like that.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the regular season for the Cup Series comes to an end in Daytona. The NASCAR Xfinity Series will be on the undercard. The ARCA Menards Series will race at Madison International Speedway on Friday, Aug. 22. That race will begin at 9 p.m. ET with TV coverage provided by FOX Sports 1.
Meanwhile, the NTT IndyCar Series will be at The Milwaukee Mile and IMSA will be at Virginia International Raceway. TV listings can be found here.
Next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch will cover Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 from Daytona. The Critic’s Annex will look at Sunday’s ARCA broadcast from the Illinois State Fairgrounds. It moved into new territory.
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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.