Sunday night (Aug. 31) marked the beginning of the playoffs for the NASCAR Cup Series. This year, Darlington Raceway marked the start as opposed to the finish of the regular season.
As expected, there was a marked change in the amount of point coverage that we got during the race compared to the past few weeks. There were constant point checks in the scoring pylon for the entire race. Admittedly, this was overkill, given some of the other things that were going on.
That said, the booth wasn’t spending that much time on the point situation during the race. As a result, it was kind of just there, but still intrusive since I would have preferred to be able to figure out driver positions quicker.
Countdown to Green was focused to a certain extent on the playoffs, but still primarily talked to drivers who they felt were going to be contenders. Chase Briscoe was a good call. Kyle Larson, not so much.
The race itself started wild with Josh Berry wiping out on the first lap. Hitting a bump ruined his day before it started.
Berry nearly took out Tyler Reddick in the crash as well. He was loose enough from the contact that the safety equipment designed to deploy in a spin came out to play. He’s lucky that even without wall contact, the spin didn’t negatively affect his race.
While drivers like Briscoe and Reddick spent the entire night at the front, there were playoff drivers who had a bunch of trouble. Alex Bowman had a 40-second pit stop early on. That wouldn’t necessarily kill your night if this were 1986.
It seemed at first that this was caused by an air gun failure. In reality, it was a connection issue with the air hose. It came loose. The team got the spare gun, but it wasn’t attached to anything. Honestly, I can’t recall seeing this in a Cup race. Regardless, just a terrible start to the playoffs for Bowman.
Sunday night’s race will probably be best remembered for Briscoe’s dominance. Leading over 400 miles of a 500-mile race will always be impressive. However, aside from immediately after the first round of stops under green, he was never really running away with the race.
Therein lies the issue with the Next Gen car. There was a lot of dirty air on Sunday night, and it prevented the kind of racing that fans really want to see. The fact that this race was mostly at night and with cooler-than-normal weather probably made the issue worse.
It also means that Leigh Diffey and his broadcast boothmates had to sell the late-race battles between Briscoe, Reddick and Erik Jones as this series of fierce duels. In reality, not a whole lot happened in the final 30 laps. Reddick just couldn’t do much with Briscoe and Jones couldn’t do much with Reddick. I would have liked to see some other action, but this was considered to be a battle for the lead, so they couldn’t break away. It’s frustrating at times.
With the green-flag racing that we had Sunday night, the race ended right on schedule, which surprised me. As a result, viewers got a good amount of post-race coverage.
Viewers got eight post-race interviews, but they were almost all playoff drivers. Jones was the sole exception to the rule. I found it interesting that they would take the time to talk to Berry after the race, knowing that he finished 128 laps down in 38th. I would have preferred hearing from John Hunter Nemechek or AJ Allmendinger, who both finished in the top five.
Speaking of Nemechek, he really came into his own as the race went on. He started 30th and was going nowhere early on. Then, his team used an alternate pit strategy and made one stop during stage one instead of two. That boosted him up, then some good pit stops and strong running got him further up the order.
Overall, this wasn’t all that exciting a race to watch, but that wasn’t necessarily NBC Sports’ fault. There was a playoff focus to the telecast, but since it’s the Round of 16, it really wasn’t that bad. However, the playoff focus was enough that viewers likely missed out on some decent action to cover the playoff battles.
NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that this race had slightly fewer passes than last year. I don’t recall a similar discussion about dirty air after last year’s race.
What was discussed a bunch on last year’s broadcast was pit strategy. You got a bunch of that Sunday night. The split strategy techniques weren’t used that much. Nemechek benefited from it early. Shane van Gisbergen got burned by it when Cody Ware got wrecked. He never recovered from the ill-timed caution.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the Cup Series will return to World Wide Technology Raceway for its fourth visit. Cup drivers will be joined by the NASCAR Xfinity Series, which will race there for the first time since 2010. Formula 1 will visit Monza, while the FIA World Endurance Championship will be at Circuit of the Americas. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s EnjoyIllinois.com 300 in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. It’ll be different watching from home since I’ve been on-site for the last three years. The Critic’s Annex will cover Sunday night’s Southern Illinois 100 for the ARCA Menards Series from the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds.
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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.