Sunday’s (Oct. 12) South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway marked the start of the Round of 8. Usually, this is where the playoff focus on broadcasts eases up a little and you can see a more complete picture of the race. That’s what we had last year.
Unfortunately, Sunday’s broadcast was not that. You had a heavy focus on the eight playoff contenders from the start of the race.
I rewatched Countdown to Green Monday morning and realized that there were actually more interviews before the race than I thought. Regardless, it was still almost completely focused on the playoffs. There was no real notion given of what we were going to see on Sunday in the race.
The focus was on the playoff contenders from the very start of the race and never really let up. It was irritating to know that if you weren’t in the playoffs, you had to do a lot to get much of a mention on the broadcast. Tyler Reddick did plenty to get his mentions since he was mixing it up with the leaders for much of the event.
Then, there’s what happened with William Byron and Ty Dillon late in the race. Yes, that got Dillon some TV time, but definitely not how he would have liked to get it.
This is effectively how NBC Sports started its coverage of the incident. Why? The broadcast was showing a replay of Byron nearly wiping out exiting turn 2 a few laps earlier. That slip had cost Byron the lead to Kyle Larson.
Obviously, we’re talking about a pretty scary wreck here. Had this crash occurred in darn near any other form of motorsports, Byron’s car would have been sent flying, possibly into the catchfence.
The broadcast had quotes from Byron’s radio right away that indicated that he had no clue that Dillon was pitting, which was helpful for viewers. The infield care center interviews revealed two different stories. Byron more or less stuck to his story from the radio.
Meanwhile, Dillon indicated that he shouldn’t have to signal if his spotter was doing his job notifying the other spotters of his intention to pit. This whole explanation sounds ridiculous.
At the speeds they’re running at Las Vegas these days, you have to throw a bone to your competitors, especially if you’re running laps down. If there’s something that you can control, do it.
Once the broadcast got to the crash, the coverage was top notch and covered it properly. This was not a garden-variety crash and it got the attention that it deserved.
There were other aspects of the broadcast that were a little weird. For instance, the broadcasters were convinced that Joey Logano had a tire coming apart at one point due to a weird noise on his in-car camera. It was never really followed up on.
Granted, seeing as this was in stage two after Ryan Blaney had his tire failure, the announcers were on high alert. Speaking of Blaney, his crash occurred right as the broadcast came back from a commercial. It seemed obvious that it was a left-front issue, but it was stated as a right-front failure. That’s a whoopsies.
One of the main reasons why the focus on the broadcast was so heavy on the playoff drivers is that there really wasn’t all that much movement Sunday. There were a couple of drivers (Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch, in particular) who were able to move forward, but a lot of drivers just stayed where they were for most of the race.
Seven of the eight playoff drivers started in the top 10 and stayed there for the vast majority of the race. Blaney had to fight from behind and made very little progress before the blown tire put him out.
A lot of the passing on Sunday came as a result of the pit sequences under green. Drivers such as Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott, who got penalized early on, had a heck of a time moving forward afterward. Wallace ended up 22nd while Elliott was 18th.
Post-race coverage was not as complete as what we had at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL. Viewers heard from a half-dozen playoff contenders, checked the points and got some post-race analysis before NBC Sports left Las Vegas.
Overall, the playoff focus was far too high in Las Vegas on Sunday. I’m not really sure how good the racing was away from the restarts because of this focus. If it wasn’t that swell, perhaps that’s an explanation for the tactics.
If the race isn’t that exciting, there are other strategies that can be used in order to be more inclusive in coverage (they did a Through the Field, but it was only about playoff drivers and got cut off when Byron nearly binned it). Luckily, next week is far easier.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is going to be a big one. NASCAR has a tripleheader at Talladega Superspeedway, where all kinds of shenanigans could go down. Or you could get a race like the last time the NASCAR Xfinity Series raced there in the fall, where the wackiness was kept to a minimum. Formula 1 will be at Circuit of the Americas in Texas, while SRO America will wrap up its season at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s YellaWood 500 from Talladega in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday at Frontstretch. Also, note that all three Talladega races will be on over-the-air broadcast TV, including Friday afternoon’s Truck race.
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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.