New Hampshire Motor Speedway is another flat track that started the Round of 12 on Sunday, Sept. 21. Unfortunately, that comes with the issues that have plagued the Next Gen car on shorter tracks.
Naturally, the playoffs were on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Countdown to Green was almost completely playoff-focused. You had a recap of Bristol Motor Speedway and the shenanigans there, along with playoff driver interviews. It’s another one of those situations where the race is not a race. It’s just a means to an end.
Once the race began, there was a decent amount of competitive racing shown early on. However, that action almost exclusively involved playoff drivers. Yes, Shane van Gisbergen ran well early on. He got a little coverage for that, not much, but some.
Kyle Busch found himself running at the back of the field early on, being the second driver lapped. Why did that happen? I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that he must be so frustrated at the moment.
The best part of the broadcast surrounded the whole mess with Ty Gibbs and Denny Hamlin on lap 110. NBC Sports had its cameras trained on the ongoing battle between the drivers at the time. We had the audio that indicated that Hamlin was very frustrated with Gibbs’ racecraft. Finally, we had the contact that resulted in Gibbs crashing.
Basically, the coverage here was definitive. It was rather obvious that Hamlin was upset with the way he was being raced and took things into his own hands.
This is a multi-faceted story here. There’s the ongoing mess that is the playoffs and how you handle yourself around those in the playoffs. Gibbs has the right to race hard. He doesn’t want to be a patsy. Meanwhile, Hamlin doesn’t want his teammate to stand in the way of a good finish.
One thing that I actually wonder about is if Hamlin’s comments over the radio that were aired on the broadcast could be construed by NASCAR as an intent to wreck Gibbs. If so, then there might be something coming down the line for him, even though he wasn’t penalized for the incident on Sunday.
I found the whole situation with Gibbs’ interview after leaving the infield care center annoying. I wouldn’t be shocked if Joe Gibbs Racing point-blank told him not to say anything. Technically, he is allowed to refuse comment in these situations. I think that would have been better than saying nothing.
The issues between Austin Dillon and Cody Ware were not the same as those between Hamlin and Ware, but the result was similar. Early in the race, Dillon felt that Ware (who was a lap down at the time) was holding him up and sent a message to him. That resulted in the race’s first caution when Ware spun in turn 3.
With all the cautions in the middle of the race, Ware came back from multiple laps down to get back on the lead lap. Looking at the replays, it’s pretty obvious to me that Ware was not pleased with Dillon. The move to go after Dillon looked pretty obvious to me.
Unlike the Hamlin-Gibbs issue, the booth didn’t seem so sure of this one. The only reason that they weren’t as sure is that they weren’t covering this spat anywhere near as much.
Arguably, Ware’s actions were more blatant than Hamlin’s. It was also obvious that Ware failed to check himself, for he wrecked himself.
Post-race coverage was substantial as the race ended a little bit ahead of schedule. Viewers got more than a dozen post-race interviews, but they were nearly all with playoff drivers. Josh Berry was the sole exception.
Overall, this broadcast was heavily focused on the playoff drivers. While yes, they were involved in quite a few scraps on Sunday, that wasn’t the whole story. Yes, Hamlin’s spat is a story. Berry inserted himself into the conversation and I’m glad that he did.
With such a large playoff driver focus, there are clearly going to be times when the race isn’t going to look all that exciting if you’re focusing on one group of cars. Given what last year’s race was like with the rain tire usage, it’s hard to really compare it to what we saw Sunday. There was a good amount of action to be had and NBC Sports showed some split-screen battles.
Probably the best takeaway from the broadcast came around lap 200 when Blaney was moving forward. Steve Letarte more or less said that the only thing that he was looking at for the rest of the race was whether Blaney could get to the front and take the battle to Joey Logano.
That’s not necessarily the most exciting way to sell a race that still had one-third of the race distance to go. It’s as if there was nothing else worth looking at with this race, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. That’s the kind of thing that might turn fans off.
Sure, Blaney was able to successfully take the fight to Logano, but what would have happened if he couldn’t have done it? What if Logano found another gear and drove off to a four-second lead? What happens then? Is there a Plan B?
That said, Letarte did a good job analyzing just what made Blaney so good on Sunday. That came on lap 45 when he astutely described how Blaney had the ability to turn his car seemingly wherever he wanted to go in the middle of the corner. No one else could do that all day.
Analysis like that with Blaney is what I really want to see on a race broadcast; I like to learn things. Granted, it’s been 37 years since I discovered NASCAR, but there’s always something new out there that can be picked up. Remember in Days of Thunder when Cole Trickle tells Harry Hodge how he learned a lot about the Cup Series by watching broadcasts on ESPN? I want NBC Sports’ broadcasts to be like that, and it’s doable.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend will be a busy one as NASCAR heads out to Kansas Speedway for the second time this year. The NASCAR Cup Series will be joined by the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday, we’ll cover the Hollywood Casino 400 from Kansas. The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will cover the ARCA Menards Series Kentuckiana Ford Dealers 200…or the NutriSource 200 from Salem Speedway. More on that in the column.
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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.