Talladega Superspeedway played host to a doubleheader of racing Saturday afternoon. First up was the Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series. This is more or less one of the crown jewels of the series. The hope is that everything is perfectly fine. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
Coverage started with a full hour of NASCAR RaceDay - NGROTS Edition. As this was the cutoff race that would determine the participants in the Round of 8, there was a lot of cutoff discussion. The two drivers on the outside looking in (Ben Rhodes and Todd Gilliland) got a lot of attention, while those that were still in but close didn't get as much. That meant that Christian Eckes, who did get eliminated,
didn't get much coverage.
The primary feature during pre-race coverage was a sit-down interview that Regan Smith conducted with Austin Hill. Naturally, Hill was in a very good mood after his victory in Las Vegas. Here, the two talked about the victory after (more or less) his worst race of 2020 at Bristol and how he feels going into Talladega without having to worry about points. I found this to be pretty standard fare. I wanted more
out of this (and I feel like FOX Sports probably has enough footage from this to provide much more), but they didn't have time to include that.
The race itself was pretty wild. Hill and Sheldon Creed dominated much of it, but they both had problems. Hill got busted for speeding on pit road under green (the killer of pit penalties at superspeedways) that ultimately put him a lap down. He was only able to get back onto the lead lap when Creed cut a tire. Given his position on track, he got it back the old-fashioned way as opposed to getting a lucky
dog.
There was one technical issue during the broadcast. During the caution between stages one and two, the broadcast was thrown back to Kaitlyn Vincie, Todd Bodine and Phil Parsons in Charlotte. I have no idea what was said. I'm operating under the assumption that the first stage was recapped (including The Big One) and they discussed how much Enfinger's cut tire was going to affect his race going
forward. I say this because (at least on my TV) the video and audio stayed in Talladega. I suppose Vince Welch didn't know about this issue because there was no acknowledgement of what happened.
Early on, Grant Enfinger cut his left rear tire and lost two laps getting it changed, the carcass pulled out of his car (no easy feat) and some damage repairs. Unfortunately, since this happened during a commercial, FOX Sports 1 was unable to show definitive proof as to how this happened. They had a replay of Enfinger pulling up exiting turn 4, but no clip to show where the initial contact occurred.
The last couple of laps were really wild. When I watched the race live, I couldn't see how Stewart Friesen got shuffled back at first. He was leading, then he was 10th, then he was in the wall. Raphael Lessard did well to put himself into the proper position to win.
Kurt Busch, given his 20 years of experience having at it at Talladega, provided very cerebral analysis. I suppose keeping yourself calm is about the only way that you can realistically function in a Talladega race. That said, Busch gave some great commentary on line energy and how individual drivers can affect the race.
Let's face some facts. Busch is generally not considered to be the most likable person in NASCAR. The man has the NASCAR equivalent of a wrap sheet of encounters with fellow drivers and media members. If I listed them all, we'd be here a while.
However, he is also a wealth of knowledge. Given a proper forum, Busch can definitely be a credit to any NASCAR broadcast. He's shown so far that he has a lot of information to share as an analyst and does a good job getting that information out there in a way that viewers can understand well. I don't know if this is going to end up being a career move for him after he finishes driving (that field seems rather
crowded right now in NASCAR), but he could thrive if that's what he ends up doing.
Post-race coverage was somewhat rough. Viewers only got a couple of quick interviews since the broadcast was running long. Viewers didn't even get to hear from Trevor Bayne, who finished second. Apparently, he was six-thousandths of a second behind winner Lessard when the yellow flag flew on the final lap.
I know that time's an issue here, but viewers do deserve at a minimum a certain number of interviews. If FOX Sports could put additional content on their mess of a website, that would be nice. This is something that ESPN did when they still aired Cup races. TNT packaged that extra content into RaceBuddy.
Note that "mess" in regards to FOXSports.com is an understatement. Hard to find anything there. Things worked so much better there four or five years ago. Apparently, they've seen the light that their pivot to video was a giant mistake and will be incorporating more actual writing onto the site going forward. In NASCAR's case, FOX Sports already has Bob Pockrass ("The Pockrass") on the payroll and he has been writing
a little lately. I guess the substantial drop in site visits after the pivot couldn't be ignored anymore.
Overall, Saturday's race had some decent racing. Creed and Hill dominated most of the proceedings until they ran into their own problems. There were some technical issues during the broadcast that were unfortunate.
There were some good shots during the telecast. For example, there was a scary shot of Kyle Warner, rear tire changer on Jordan Anderson's truck, getting hit by Hill when Hill was leaving his stall. It gets worse. Warner was wearing a helmet cam (a personal GoPro, not anything for FOX Sports). Anderson posted footage from that on his Twitter feed earlier today. I don't think any of you can deny the fact that this was frightening.
I just wish that there was some more post-race coverage. FOX Sports can leverage their mess of a website to help with this, but I don't know if there is the will to do it.
Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography.
