The final night of the regular season, most of the time, has been a night with overwhelming playoff focus. After all, it is the cutoff race.
Having the last race of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season at Daytona International Speedway means that the field is going to be bunched together for much of the race, which can serve as a detractor from the ever-present points. The scenario entering Saturday (Aug. 23) night was such that the storyline could be minimized.
Tyler Reddick had a half-race’s worth of points more than Alex Bowman entering the evening. Once the Big One broke out, he was locked in.
The only thing that could rain on that parade was if someone from further back ended up winning the race. That came very close to happening, but Ryan Blaney prevented it.
Given the factors above, the point of focus was rather minimal. You saw some point checks starting in stage two, but by that point, Bowman was already out of the race. You could argue why bother at that point, because nothing was going to change unless someone out of the mix was leading. Chris Buescher entered the race 60 points behind Bowman, so he couldn’t have caught him regardless of what happened.
Despite the overall lack of focus on the points, there was still a less inclusive focus during the broadcast. Normally, on these drafting-style racetrack broadcasts, you see a number of the underdog teams putting themselves into the mix. Admittedly, you had that to a certain degree with Cody Ware, who got a good amount of coverage this past weekend with the Jamocha Shake promotion that Arby’s is doing right now.
NBC has the right person on play-by-play in Leigh Diffey here. There’s probably no play-by-play man in motorsports right now who can bring the emotions at the end of a big race.
The finish of this event was quite exciting to watch and Diffey brought his A-game. Also, the wrecking at the finish was kept to a minimum. Yes, Buescher wiped out and Todd Gilliland bumped the wall exiting turn 4. However, this was one of the cleaner superspeedway finishes under green in recent years.
Part of the reason that the end of the race wasn’t as wild as we’ve seen in recent years is that there was a big crash on lap 27 that took a number of contenders out of the hunt. No one was injured, but it was a mess.
NBC did a pretty good job of breaking down the various factors at play. With repeated views, the booth determined that Bubba Wallace came down a little too much from the top, resulting in the contact with Joey Logano and Kyle Busch. However, Wallace also got a bump from Kyle Larson that more or less triggered the move down the track.
Post-race coverage was very brief. Mostly due to the very slow first stage (which took an hour to run), the race ended 15 minutes beyond the end of the scheduled timeslot. As a result, NBC only interviewed Blaney and showed the playoff point standings before leaving for the news.
Those of you watching on Peacock got additional post-race coverage. They even advertised it as being up next on NBC during Blaney’s interview, but they cut to the late news in Albany, N.Y., barely a couple of minutes after it finished. It appears that an audible was called on short notice.
On Peacock, viewers got a number of interviews and additional analysis. Not everyone interviewed was part of the playoffs, which was good to see.
If you’re wondering about the regular season championship trophy ceremony and where that was, my understanding is that it occurred prior to the race and likely prior to NBC signing on. As a result, the broadcast didn’t miss it.
Overall, I enjoyed the broadcast. There were some good storylines in the race and the overall point situation didn’t dominate things. The race was allowed to play out naturally. Really, that’s all I ask for with these cutoff races. I get irritated by the sheer amount of point coverage in some of these playoff and playoff-adjacent events since it can detract from the event at large.
That’s all for this week. Next week is the final split weekend of the season. The NASCAR Cup and Craftsman Truck Series playoffs will both get underway this weekend at Darlington Raceway. Meanwhile, the NASCAR Xfinity Series will make its final trip (for now) to Portland International Raceway.
ARCA has two of its divisions racing this weekend as well. The ARCA Menards Series West will race at Portland on Friday, Aug. 29, at 7 p.m. ET with coverage provided by FloRacing. Two days later on Sunday the 31st, the ARCA Menards Series will race at 1-mile dirt track DuQuoin State Fairgrounds. The green flag for that 100-lap race will take place at 8:30 p.m. ET with TV coverage provided by FOX Sports 1.
The NTT IndyCar Series season also wraps up at Nashville Superspeedway. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll cover the Cook Out Southern 500 from Darlington. The Critic’s Annex will cover Friday night’s Xfinity race from Daytona.
If you have a gripe with me, or just want to say something about my critique, feel free to post in the comments below. Even though I can’t always respond, I do read your comments. Also, if you want to “like” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, please click on the appropriate icons. If you would like to contact either of NASCAR’s media partners, 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.