The Daytona 500 is the biggest race of the year. It’s also the time when some changes are made. In FOX’s case, it introduced a new director for its NASCAR Cup Series broadcasts this past weekend in Daren Foster.
Foster has been working for FOX Sports since 2000, starting as a regular production staffer and working his way up to producer and director. Prior to directing Cup races, he has directed NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races, Big East basketball games and NFL football games.
Starting at Daytona International Speedway is obviously going to be a big deal. However, this change didn’t necessarily work well at the end of the race. As you know by now, heck went down on the final lap Sunday.
Mike Joy did a great job calling the finish on Sunday (Feb. 15).
However, I have notes regarding the coverage of the incidents. As you can tell, Carson Hocevar got turned into the wall on the final lap by Erik Jones, then spun and triggered a big wreck.
Viewers never really saw the full extent of that crash, even with the replays they had. It makes viewers think that FOX was hiding something. Were they? I don’t know. Perhaps the level of camera zoom that they had at play on Sunday meant that they couldn’t see anything else. If so, that’s rather sad.
When this happens, I tend to comb social media to find something. Sure enough, there’s always a chap or 20 in the stands with a cell phone that can help. Tom Giannini posted this clip of the final two laps to YouTube that gives you a decent idea of how big the first wreck was.
As you can see, the first crash was a bit more substantial than FOX let on. However, seemingly everyone was able to clear out quickly. That was integral to NASCAR’s decision not to throw the yellow, but it seemed really debatable.
Needless to say, when FOX has 80+ cameras on site, I shouldn’t have to go to YouTube or social media to find a more definitive clip of an incident, especially one that happened on the final lap of the Daytona 500. That kind of thing is inexcusable. You can’t do that.
Daytona also brings viewers the most pre-race coverage of the year, more than two hours. FOX filled that time with a lot of content. Likely the best of that content was a piece about Greg Biffle, a man who was very skilled on the track, talented in the garage and a giving man away from the track.
The general idea that came out of the piece is that Biffle loved to race, but he was a greater human being. He’s someone who took inventory of what he had and determined what he could do with it to benefit everyone. That could be testing setups, running people as hard as possible, or helping to organize the airlift.
In the past couple of years, Biffle became close to Garrett “Cleetus McFarland” Mitchell. Mitchell was also involved in the airlift after Hurricane Helene and gave his memories of how driven Biffle was.
Granted, there’s been a bunch of retrospectives on Biffle in the couple of months since his plane crash, but this was a great piece. Away from the track, Biffle was a giving person who apparently owned large tracts of land that he enjoyed. It was clear to me that Biffle was well-liked. Jamie McMurray clearly found it tough to talk about him. As he said, “It’s still too fresh.”
Denny Hamlin talked at length to Tom Rinaldi about his situation last year with his father Dennis dying of emphysema and how he knew that last year was going to be his last chance to win the championship before his father died. Then, the house fire occurred that killed Dennis and seriously injured his mother.
There was no mention in the piece about the injury that Hamlin reportedly suffered while going through the charred remains. He did find a journal that his father kept over the final couple of years of his life. The piece was powerful to watch. Hamlin had a terrible 2025, but he’s still here.
Other features included Chris Myers sitting down with Brad Keselowski to discuss his recent broken femur, Josh Sims paddle boating with Team Penske’s drivers (Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano). Michael Waltrip got some more usage than normal on Sunday, and things seemed a little off. Not sure what was going on there. The best thing that he did on Sunday was a feature with Connor Zilisch where we discovered just how crucial a role Kevin Harvick played in Zilisch’s rise.
For this year, FOX unveiled a new graphics package for its NASCAR coverage. As compared to what it’s used for the past few years, it’s an upgrade and cleaner to look at. Likely the most notable change is that the cartoony figures are now gone for good, replaced by pictures.
Finally, there are some fixes that need to be made.
For instance, the pylon froze on lap 98 on Sunday, forcing it to be removed. It was fixed approximately five laps later. Also, when the overlay is brought up to show speed and rpms during qualifying, there wasn’t a change in the background to allow the positions below 10th to revolve three at a time. You’d see one through 10, then 11-13, 21-23, etc. That doesn’t work so well.
The on-track action was pretty decent on Sunday, but it’s also a superspeedway race. Since everyone is packed together, covering the stories is easier at Daytona than it will be three weeks from now in Phoenix Raceway.
Harvick was quick to note that a mechanical issue had struck BJ McLeod early Sunday to cause his crash. The replay from the front bumper cam on Justin Allgaier’s crash was quite unusual. You can only see so much from high views. The bumper cam showed that McLeod’s car was smoking and possibly on fire before the failure happened and wiped him out.
On Monday, Mark Martin posted that McLeod indicated to him that it was a hub failure that caused the crash. That would explain the fire that the booth saw on the aforementioned bumper cam replay.
Post-race coverage was decent. Viewers got a half-dozen interviews (including race winner Tyler Reddick) and some post-race analysis. We also saw Michael Jordan and Jim France embrace in victory lane, which is notable just knowing how they were figuratively at each other’s throats less than three months ago.
NASCAR once again moved the start of the race up an hour due to weather. It truly worked because had the race started at the scheduled time, it might have been rain-shortened.
Admittedly, I spent a decent chunk of the race checking Weather Underground, the RadarSource app and using Google Earth’s measure function to determine how far the leading edge of the rain was from the track. FOX likely didn’t cover the potential rain as much as it should have. The broadcasters didn’t really mention it prior to the final stage of the race, by which time, the precipitation was less than 70 miles from the track. You can’t just pretend it’s not there, even though you don’t want to talk about it.
Overall, FOX has a solid team doing the Cup broadcasts (there were no changes for this year). Everyone works well together. They just need to quit zooming in so far so that you can’t make things out. I also wish that they could have spread the features out through the FOX portion of the season since you might not see much for the rest of their section of the year.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, NASCAR travels to EchoPark Speedway for another tripleheader. This one won’t have anywhere near as much on-track activity. TV listings can be found here. Remember that qualifying moves to Amazon Prime Video this weekend until June.
We will have a recap of Sunday’s AutoTrader 400 in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. In the Critic’s Annex, we’re going to look at Friday night’s Fresh from Florida 250 and how FOX Sports 1’s broadcasts for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series can be improved.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the Frontstretch email 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 Frontstretch 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.
I’ve been a nascar fan for many years. I never miss the Daytona 500. In my opinion this was the absolute worst race I’ve ever watched, this will be the last cup race I watch, if NASCAR thinks this is what fans want to see they are sadly mistaken
Fan here for many years as well. Once upon a time, I’d host Daytona parties, complete with driver drafts akin to fantasy football, for those who wanted to participate. This year, I skipped stage 1 and 2, as I saw zero point in watching multiple hours what amounts to qualifying, fuel runs to scheduled cautions, and commercials to set up the final stage. I plan to go ahead and skip stage three in the weeks to come.
While I can’t say that’s the worst NASCAR race I’ve ever watched, it was predictably terrible. When every rule is made to ensure most races have “game 7” moments, it completely eliminates any real drama. May as well just spend a few hours watching a random number generator.
The end of the race followed the script, with rock ’em sock ’em wrecking “racing”, as is the case with all too many NASCAR races these days. The exact same scenario played out in the truck race as well. This isn’t the drivers fault. It’s the rules package.
I don’t see the point in watching, when races are more apt to have a “surprise” winner than the best driver/team that day taking home the prize. Upset wins, or closely contested wins were great, when they happened organically, and happened rarely. Currently, there is no such thing as an upset winner…they should rename the winner’s trophy The Luckiest Driver Award.
Bring on Indycar and F1! Neither is perfect, but at least the strongest performing team is awarded with the win the vast majority of the time.
I’m sure that Nascar covered their revised position on last lap cautions in the driver’s meeting. They were consistent between the Duals and the 500. It does appear that Nascar believes that more ‘human interest’ stories will bring back viewers. The Denny Hamlin piece was new. And while I was a Greg Biffle fan, that story has been told often and didn’t need to be told again. I’m actually surprised that the 25 year anniversary of Dale’s passing didn’t receive an hour’s worth of pre-race coverage on its own.
Nascar did a great job of pulling the start of the race up.
I am puzzled how every camera missed the action on the final lap. Camera coverage on the final lap is usually meticulously choreographed.
Mike Joy was not perfect, but he was still damn good once the racing started. Harvick is excellent. Bowyer is not necessary, but is less offensive than he used to be. All in all a great start to the year. Hopefully they are rewarded with good viewership numbers in spite of the Olympics. I know I was torn between the race and mixed doubles curling.
When I was young & dumb, we had a drinking game during Monday Night Football –had to take a shot every time Dan Dierdorf said something stupid.
If I was young & dumb now, it’d be a shot every time Harvick or Bowyer said “scenario”.
Good review, Phil.
We played the “fuel economy” game. Every time they mentioned conserving fuel, we took a shot. Didn’t make it to the finish.