Homestead-Miami Speedway was a busy place last weekend.  For the Xfinity Series, Homestead brought the first doubleheader weekend of the season with a 250-mile race on Saturday, followed by a midday second race on Sunday.

The Saturday event was the race originally scheduled for March 21.  Dale Earnhardt Jr. was originally scheduled to make his one start of 2020 in this event when it was still 300 miles and sponsored by the U.S. Census.  With the rescheduled date, Earnhardt Jr. kept up his plan to compete.

Recently, FOX has been cutting out the pre-race invocation and National anthem from the Xfinity and Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series events.  That isn't to say that they're not happening (they are, believe me).  However, a number of viewers are not happy about it.  Some are even claiming that it's an extension of NASCAR's recent decision to ban the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia (also known as the Confederate battle flag) from tracks.

In this situation, I believe that these fans are overreacting.  FOX (and by extension, NASCAR) appears to be taking the mentality used for postponed broadcasts here.  Start the broadcast and get the engines started as soon as possible.  It's nothing we haven't seen with Cup races run on Monday afternoons.  Effectively, everything is being done in hurry-up mode.

Saturday's race started off with yet another introduction of ballast to the racing surface.  It seemed like as soon as the booth got word of debris on-track, they were on ballast watch.  I know that's not really something that you would plan for, but you just never know.

FOX was ultimately able to find definitive proof that the debris came from Chase Briscoe's No. 98.  When I saw this, I knew that they were looking at four-race suspensions.  If I were on the broadcast, I would have held up four fingers and displayed them like I were a boxing referee informing the judges of a point deduction.  Basically, this was handled perfectly.

From that point, there were constant updates on Briscoe's position and his recovery.  In all honesty, he got lucky.  A dearth of cautions at the right times, along with an opportune caution or two allowed him to make up six laps (including getting a couple back the old way) to finish seventh.  Just amazing.

The duo of Clint Bowyer and Jamie McMurray joined Adam Alexander in the broadcast booth Saturday.  The result was some decent commentary.  They definitely have something resembling a comedy routine.  Naturally, McMurray is the straight man to Bowyer's wild-and-crazy persona.

FOX made the decision to not even give viewers a small glimpse of who pitted during the Competition Caution.  The only driver mentioned prior to the restart that had pitted was Ryan Sieg, who ultimately won stage one.  However, you also had a bunch of others stop, including drivers like Kyle Weatherman, who actually earned stage points.

Racing on Saturday was very enjoyable to watch.  You had drivers willing to race side-by-side and had anyone been able to be at the track, they would have been entertained.  With the tire strategies at play, you had drivers that you don't often see getting decent coverage like Weatherman, Bayley Currey, Colin Garrett and more.

Despite the race running mostly green, the race ran right up against the 150-minute time slot on FOX.  As a result, post-race coverage was relatively brief.  Viewers got only a couple of interviews before the broadcast from Homestead ended.

Overall, I did enjoy the broadcast Saturday.  There were a lot of interesting stories that went on during the event.  Once again, the ongoing at-track situation did hamper what could be covered.  

For example, we never really saw what happened to Justin Allgaier.  He hit the wall somewhere prior to the final round of pit road and apparently broke something in the right front corner of the car.  That forced him to go behind the wall.  I guess he managed to make minimum speed before doing it.  That was never actually broached on-air, but you can make repairs under those circumstances behind the wall if you make minimum speed after a pit stop.

The above photo is courtesy of NASCAR Media via Getty Images.

Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.