Richmond Raceway has had an up-and-down feeling over the past couple of years. The Next Gen car has likely hurt the racing there, but the tire wear more or less makes up for it. However, its NASCAR Cup Series race is at night, which results in the lines being taken not being as varied as what we would get in the daytime.
On USA Sports Pre-Race, Jimmy Roberts narrated a piece about Denny Hamlin’s past year. As you can imagine, it’s been deep valleys and high peaks with his father’s illness and death in a house fire (combined with his mother’s burns), losing the championship at Phoenix Raceway, but emerging triumphant in the big lawsuit against NASCAR. Needless to say, it’s been a roller coaster.
The other piece, under the My Fandom banner, was on Austin Dillon, the two-time defending champion at Richmond entering Saturday, Aug. 15. A lot of it was focused on the 2024 race. You saw fans actively stating that they wanted to follow a driver willing to do anything to win. Well, with Dillon, he’s every bit of that.
Every driver has fans out there. Despite underperforming for what seems like his entire career, despite six career wins, Dillon has his supporters. USA Sports showed that he has his backers.
The overall on-track product Saturday night was not too dissimilar to past years, even with the extra power. The extra power appears to have shortened the pit windows and allowed for maybe one more stop.
However, that doesn’t really account for NASCAR’s Loop Data showing a 42% drop in passing from last year. It’s like last year’s race was an outlier, with more or less similar circumstances (there was only one more caution and the final 160 laps were green).
What did that on-track action look like on USA Network? You had a lot of good action in and around the restarts. The pit strategy meant that you had a decent amount of comers and goers, and a decent amount of racing for position. If there was a time in the race bereft of action, it was toward the end of stage two when Joey Logano was running away with things.
Even then, you had other stories. For example, Kyle Larson chose an alternate pit strategy to stop with 29 laps remaining in the stage to make up spots. It put him nearly two laps down and in the remaining laps, he nearly got back on the lead lap with fresher tires. Larson ended up getting the Lucky Dog at the end of the stage. A late caution would have screwed his night, but he ultimately came home sixth.
Some viewers likely thought a decent chunk of the race was boring, but I didn’t really have any issues with the way the actual race was broadcast. More or less, this is what you get with USA Sports Cup Series broadcasts. You have a competent booth that is fairly knowledgeable and a pretty decent production group.
Now, having said that, this was a tough weekend for TV production in Richmond. There was a fire in the TV compound Friday night right around the time that they were hoping to start the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. Knowing what we know now, they would have barely gotten the green out before they would’ve had to stop again due to lightning. The rain that ultimately fell would have likely been considered too much for NASCAR’s rain tires.
Also last week, there was a whole uproar on social media about Leigh Diffey not being the right man to call Cup races seemingly solely because he’s not American-born and has an accent. As far as I’m concerned, that is a bunch of hooey.
Diffey’s one of the best play-by-play guys in sports right now. We should be very happy that we have him for USA Sports’ Cup races. To want to dump him just because you don’t like his accent is short-sighted at best.
Do I think Diffey’s accent has worked against him in NASCAR in the past? Yes, he has told me something to that effect in the past.
Diffey made his Cup race play-by-play debut in 2017 for NBC when Rick Allen was on assignment. Could he have done more back then than he ultimately did? Perhaps, I don’t know.
Despite the race actually running pretty quickly with only four cautions, the race still ended 15 minutes late. As a result, there wasn’t all that much post-race coverage.
Viewers got interviews with seven of the top-eight finishers and some post-race analysis before leaving Richmond for the newest episode of NASCAR Americana.
Admittedly, one of the biggest stories Saturday night was Larson’s unexpected attempt to do the Richmond-Knoxville Raceway double. Of course, it only happened due to rain in Iowa, but it was a big deal to fly to Iowa right after running a 400-lap short track race and running on dirt halfway across the country.
This story was never actually broached on the broadcast. Larson wasn’t even planning on doing it until about halfway through the race when his team realized the Knoxville Nationals was in a rain delay. Larson’s team put together the necessary plans so that he could get to Knoxville and informed NASCAR almost without Larson’s knowledge (he reportedly didn’t want to think about it). That allowed him to get excused from the post-race bullpen to skedaddle out of town.
Had he not gone to Knoxville, we might have heard from him since he likely had one of the most interesting races Saturday night. Much of the coverage Larson got was centered upon his recent struggles, his bad qualifying effort of 30th and the alternate pit strategy that he employed in stage two. Alas, he won the Knoxville Nationals.
Ultimately, the race broadcast was fine. I would have liked a little more coverage further down the order, but the constant pitting made that hard.
If there’s one thing I’d really like to see improvement with, that’s USA Sports Pre-Race. They need to preview the race better. We’re not getting many interviews or information that viewers would like to know. Sure, they had a couple of features Saturday night, but just not much in the way of an actual preview.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series makes its one visit of the year to New Hampshire Motor Speedway. They’ll be joined by the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. The NTT IndyCar Series will be in Washington, D.C. for another street race, while IMSA will be at VIRginia International Raceway for a GT-only race. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we will cover the Dollar Tree 301 from New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The Critic’s Annex will cover the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race from Richmond with Eric Brennan on the call.
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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.
My objection to Diffey has nothing to do with his accent, though it is a bit jarring as he is covering a ‘southern’ completely American sport. My problem is his ‘hard sell all the time at peak volume’ delivery. He is certainly knowledgeable, but I find him exhausting. I admit, I still miss Allan Bestwick or Rick Allen, because they knew that you need peaks and valleys.
I miss Bob Jenkins, Benny Parson, Ned & Glenn Jarrett, Buddy Baker, Eli Gold, et al from back in the ESPN / TNN / TBS days.
Neil Bonnett. Chris Economaki.
Yes..agree on all the great names mentioned above. Differ can’t carry any of their microphones.
He failed in Indy car , now he weasled his way to NASCAR, we said..hey wait a minute..and all the Dudley DoRights says it’s US who are wrong.
Question..how many AMERICANS are the play by play announcers for F1 or World Touring?? Probably zero…
And he makes EVERYTHING sound like the broadcast of the freaking Hindenberg crash landing for Pete sakes!
And he’s taking away a job from a real NASCAR fan..like Adam Alexander, yeah I know he’s already got a gig… or Dylan Welch..
We deserve better and don’t need to be brow beat because we bring that fact to light.
Some redundant comments I’ve made before, I apologize for that, but I hate what the last part of this season will sound like!!!
The Modified cars should be run on Sunday since it is always the best of the weekend. The Knoxville race paid $200,000 to win.
“I’m Leigh Diffey and I don’t know why I’m yelling.”
I think Leigh Diffey is wonderful in the booth. He adds a level of excitement. He clearly is on top of the action and knows what is going on.
There is nothing wrong with his accent. It adds an international flair to NASCAR and isn’t that what the sport needs instead of a niche American product? NASCAR tries to go to Canada and Mexico to expand the sport.
I think when we are in this part of the season he is better than other networks callers outside of Mike Joy (who isn’t getting younger).