Going into Sunday’s (May 3) race, a lot of the discussion was centered on Texas Motor Speedway races with the Next Gen being wreckfests.
The NASCAR Cup Series only ran one race there with the Next Gen at the traditional 500-mile distance. That race had 16 cautions, and when you add in a red flag due to lightning in the vicinity, it took nearly five hours to complete. Since then, there’s been plenty of wrecking to go around.
Sunday wasn’t quite like that. There were a good amount of wrecks, plenty from drivers losing it over the turn 4 bumps, but there were no giant multi-car pileups. That removed an element from FOX Sports’ preparation for Sunday.
Without excessive wrecking, what would you have? As it turns out, it was a slow move back in the direction of what Texas was before it was reconfigured. If this is the beginning of something to come, I’m going to be very happy in a couple of more years.
That said, one of the most memorable moments of Sunday’s Wurth 400 was when Christopher Bell crashed while leading the race after getting clipped by a spinning Todd Gilliland. That was just plain bad luck.
This post is how FOX Sports 1 showed this incident in real time. It just seemed like everyone involved was a little off the pace. If anything, the scoring pylon was in the way.
What could have made that better was simply if the helicopter/blimp camera had zoomed out just a little more. If that had been the case, then we would have seen Gilliland’s spin develop in real time. This was bad luck on FOX Sports’ part.
Joey Logano’s crash into Cole Custer on pit road was somewhat similar. It just seemed like the announcers were a little slow on the uptake on Sunday.
One of the bigger stories from Sunday’s race that did get some airtime is that the wide groove from the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts and Craftsman Truck series races earlier in the weekend did stick around. The cars were able to get off the bottom of the track. However, Kevin Harvick noted that the groove was wider than what is actually usable for the Next Gen car.
Honestly, that’s very unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. It’s the car itself that is making the track look bad.
I’m just happy that all the effects of the PJ1 TrackBite have finally worn away. It’s likely that the spraying of the track surface negatively affected the natural expansion of the racing groove. Remember that this is the 10th year with the current track surface at Texas.
The widening of the groove helped make the race more competitive as well. According to NASCAR’s Loop Data, there were 2.5 more passes per lap under green than last year. Granted, there were a couple of rounds of pit stops under green, but we had a better race to watch.
The racing for position was still clustered around the restarts, but it was possible to run side-by-side. You didn’t have to bottom feed. The booth was happy to see that, but there’s still work to be done.
The importance of clean air is still substantial. Take what Corey Heim did Sunday before he crashed out. He spent a large chunk of the race on alternate pit strategies, yet led 69 laps. Unless you had 50+ laps on your tires like Brad Keselowski did at the end of stage two, you could keep yourself in the hunt on worn tires.
Post-race coverage was relatively brief since the race ended right up against the end of the timeslot. That said, viewers got quite a few interviews before leaving Texas for NHRA coverage in South Georgia. A lot more than I originally thought.
Also, at the end of the race, there was the whole mess between Kyle Busch and John Hunter Nemechek coming to the white flag. The replays indicated that Busch tried to clear himself and turned himself into the outside wall on the backstretch. He then had additional contact in turn 3 that resulted in Nemechek spinning into the wall.
Busch didn’t talk to the media after the race but gave his side of the story on social media. He also used SMT data to back up his point.
Nemechek was not pleased. He indicated that Busch wasn’t clear and that he had every right to be where he was.
Clint Bowyer agreed with Nemechek. He stated that Busch wasn’t clear. In fact, he referenced a lot of drivers who weren’t clear on Sunday. The incident in turn 3? That was just plain intentional, according to Bowyer. It’s hard to argue against that.
Prior to the race, Harvick sat down with Carson Hocevar to discuss his big day at Talladega Superspeedway. The takeaway from that is that nothing that happened there was unexpected. Hocevar is a very confident driver and knew that his team put him in a good spot. All he had to do was capitalize.
As compared to Talladega, I enjoyed the broadcast a lot more. There was decent action at Texas for once. The wider groove allowed the drivers to race each other more. Being able to race each other more meant that there were fewer shenanigans.
That said, the action could be a lot better if the Next Gen car were fully up to snuff, something that Harvick alluded to. Hopefully, that day will come.
My advice is to be as inclusive as you can. Cover as many stories as possible. Don’t just stick to one or two core stories. You could argue that the Busch-Nemechek mess is an example of that, but I want as much as possible. Remember that TV is often the main conduit that fans get to see this sport.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is wildly busy. Watkins Glen International will host a quadruple-header. Friday, May 8, is a doubleheader with the NASCAR Craftsman Truck and ARCA Menards series, while the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races Saturday. Sunday will see new territory for the Cup Series as the race has been lengthened from 90 to 100 laps.
Outside of Watkins Glen, the NTT IndyCar Series will race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course, while the FIA World Endurance Championship is at Spa. Finally, SRO America will race at Sebring International Raceway. TV listings can be found here.
We will have a critique of Sunday’s Go Bowling at the Glen in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday. The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will cover Saturday’s Andy’s Frozen Custard 340.
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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.