Saturday saw the NASCAR Xfinity Series make their fifth trip to Circuit of the Americas for 250 kilometers of racing. In the past few months, the Xfinity Series has played a solid role in the overall resurgence of The CW. Saturday was the bad part of that.

The Saturday afternoon schedule for The CW was a tripleheader of sporting events starting with a Syracuse-Virginia Tech basketball game at Cassell Coliseum in Blacksburg, Va. That game ran long, then went into overtime.

The original plan was to simply wait out the delay and start when they finished up, which is a typical plan. Things changed when the game went to overtime. While they did provide updates "Ex: When we're done here, we'll get you out to Austin for Xfinity action." 

Let's face it, of the three events on The CW Saturday, the race got the highest ratings.  This event had 1.12 million viewers. Through the first three weeks, ratings are up something like 37% year-over-year. So far, it seems like Nexstar's decision to go with the Xfinity Series is really working out for the network.

A change was made when the game went to overtime since it looked there would be a real change that they would miss the start of the race. They made the decision to start the broadcast on NewsNation, a news channel owned by Nexstar (which owns 85% of The CW) that used to be WGN America. They hard cut away from news coverage to go to pre-race at 2:25 p.m. ET.

By that time, the national anthem had already been sung and Carla Metts was by herself to introduce the broadcast. A couple of minutes later, the command to start engines was given.

The CW joined the broadcast during the pace laps once the Syracuse-Virginia Tech game ended. That still stinks, but we got the whole race on TV.

We've talked about the tires that were used last weekend in Austin a bit at Frontstretch this week, but it never really came up much on FOX. On The CW, you got a lot more tire coverage. For example, viewers got a good look at some actual tire issues (blistering) on Austin Hill's tires. I wouldn't be able to tell you whether that was a thing during the Cup race because we never saw any proof.

Why can't we get this coverage on FOX?  They're paying beaucoup bucks to air NASCAR Cup Series races and stiff viewers on a lot of the coverage that they deserve to give.

As compared to Sunday, the winds weren't anywhere near as much of an issue. As a result, you had more camera angles available. I didn't feel like I missed as much.

Post-race coverage was fairly extensive. Viewers got interviews with seven different drivers, a check of the points and some post-race analysis before they left Austin.

Overall, this was a pretty good broadcast. The scheduling is really going to hurt The CW for the next couple of weeks. Once the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament starts, that will go out the window since Nexstar doesn't have the rights to air games.

I felt more informed here than I did during the Cup race. I could tell who was moving forward and who wasn't. The broadcast was just more in tune with the race. You knew that they were paying attention to the fender issues on Connor Zilisch and Carson Kvapil's cars since the broadcast booth knew that it could be an issue. Unfortunately for Kvapil, it ended up being too much, but you knew that he was there.

Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager for Frontstretch.  He can be reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.