Last weekend, the NASCAR Xfinity Series raced 150 miles on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's infield road course.  It was a decent race that AJ Allmendinger ended up winning.  It was also quite interesting to watch.

With this race being the second half of a doubleheader on NBC with the NTT IndyCar Series' Gallagher Grand Prix, there were some INDYCAR elements on the broadcast.  Specifically, James Hinchcliffe spent the race as the fourth man in the broadcast booth alongside Rick Allen, Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte.

Watching this broadcast, it's rather obvious with Hinchcliffe's terminology that he's a bit out of place.  Different terms are generally used in INDYCAR as compared to NASCAR.  That said, he came into the broadcast fresh off of the Gallagher Grand Prix.  He was clearly still in the zone from that event.

Overall, I felt that Hinchcliffe was able to bring quite a bit of knowledge to the broadcast.  He has raced on the circuit before, which is pretty critical since none of NBC Sports' on-air personalities for NASCAR have that experience.

I believe that Hinchcliffe speaks well and does work pretty good with the NASCAR booth.  That's notable given how much of a closed bunch that they can be.  Remember that Rick Allen is very big on togetherness and actually intentionally set up a vacation with Steve Letarte and Jeff Burton to foster friendships between himself and his colleagues, along with their wives.

It should be noted that Hinchcliffe was the fourth man in the booth.  Unlike two-booth setups like what NBC has used at places like Charlotte in the past, this race saw all four personalities shoved into one booth, which is not really ideal.  

If there is a network that can make such a setup work in motorsports, it's likely NBC.  Things just seem to be more regimented there.  People don't step all over each other.

In addition, the booth is in the infield, so you really can't see much outside of the booth except right in front of you.  As a result, by infield road course standards, you're completely dependent on monitors.  Perhaps that could help someone like Hinchcliffe on his NASCAR debut.

Since this was the second race of the day on NBC and there was nowhere that they had to get to after the Gallagher Grand Prix ended, Countdown to Green actually started 12 minutes early Saturday.  That would have likely thrown some fans for a loop if they weren't home and were dependent on a DVR (at the scheduled start time at 3 p.m., Hinchcliffe was literally mid-sentence talking about the upcoming race).

During that show, NBC actually took the time to interview a number of people.  I think this might have been the first time that Scott Heckert ever got interviewed on a NASCAR broadcast.  He talked about the importance of testing the grip on the racetrack during the track walk with Dave Burns.

I can personally attest to the importance of this because while there are extremely visible changes that can be made to a track surface, there are also much smaller ones that you might miss on TV.  For instance, the one time I did a track walk at now-Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, the track had done a small amount of sealing in a couple of turns.  Those patches were super-sticky and ultimately ruined a pair of my shoes.  The rest of the track had a fairly old surface, but one that still had grip.

Race coverage was pretty decent Saturday.  There were a good amount of coverage throughout the field.  There were fewer shenanigans than on Sunday and with a cleaner event, you could spotlight more action.

Post-race coverage was about average.  Viewers got to hear from the top four finishers (AJ Allmendinger, Alex Bowman, Justin Allgaier and Ross Chastain).  In Chastain's case, he talked about his race and being unable to hold off Allgaier for third on the final lap.

He also had yet another on-track incident, this time with Sheldon Creed where he ran into Creed entering turn 1.  Ultimately, that didn't do him any favors.  We didn't get the other side of the story from Creed, though.

Overall, I actually liked Hinchcliffe's contributions to the broadcast.  Even though he is green in general to NASCAR, I thought that he adjusted well.  The whole thing about having "two mayors" in the booth and the idea of building a rivalry between them was ridiculous and shouldn't be repeated.  It was forced as heck.

I noticed a number of fans on Twitter during the race Saturday that thought that Hinchcliffe could have a future as a NASCAR commentator starting in 2025 when the next TV deal kicks in...whatever that actually looks like.  We are a long way off from that and I couldn't even tell you what networks are going to sign on for the next deal.  If that were to happen, I'd find it intriguing.  Sort of a modern day David Hobbs situation where he was a booth analyst for NASCAR races for years at CBS despite having a grand total of two stock car starts.

Are we going to see more of Hinchcliffe on NASCAR broadcasts this year?  I don't know.  Probably not.  This was more of a why not situation since he was already there.  Technically, there's nothing stopping him from showing up on an INDYCAR off-weekend, though (as noted above, this weekend isn't one of them).

Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.  Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.