Friday night saw the Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series travel to Martinsville for their first-ever night race at the paperclip.  Based on what I know, it was probably not the most comfortable race to watch from the stands since it was rather cool outside.  It was not so much on the track.

This race will likely be remembered for a series of on-track shenanigans late in the race.  For instance, Raphael Lessard had a legitimate chance to win the race before he got dumped in turn 2 in a crash that also took out Brett Moffitt and his swell Harry Gant throwback scheme (Note: Moffitt spent time with Gant last week.  Remember when you see the picture of Moffitt with Gant that Gant is 80).

Also, someone spun out Brandon Jones (in the race to get Kyle Busch Motorsports' No. 51 into the owners' Championship 4) on the final lap.  Sam Mayer's truck also burst into flames, but this was never caught on the broadcast.  I just knew something was up because Mayer took the white flag, but never got back around to the checkers.  Would have liked to know what happened there.

Also, someone spun out Carson Hocevar with 15 laps to go.  Hocevar was running in the top 10 at the time and we got no replays of this.  I have no clue what happened there.  Luckily, Hocevar was able to continue and finish on the lead lap.

Pre-race coverage was somewhat average.  Viewers got a couple of driver interviews with playoff contenders.  We also got Radioactive from Texas.  If you saw that race, then you know that some heck went down back on Oct. 25.  The constant stream of bleeped out words caused a stir during the SpeedyCash.com 400 race broadcast, let alone this.  There were some angry dudes entering Martinsville and the thought was that you were going to see some retaliation.  Even with some of the shenanigans Friday night, it didn't really come to pass.

For this race, Kurt Busch was back in the broadcast booth after missing Texas due to his Cup responsibilities.  It's been 20 years since he ran a Truck race at Martinsville.  It was different back then.  That said, he was decent.  He brought a different outlook to the race that was appreciated.

Meanwhile, Michael Waltrip came off as confused at times.  Then again, the early incident that all blocked the track and saw Sheldon Creed (briefly) lose the lead doesn't happen every day.  I'm actually surprised that NASCAR gave him the lead after that.  He wasn't in the crash, but he didn't maintain a cautious pace.  NASCAR rules state that if you don't maintain a cautious pace, you can lose positions.  Marcos Ambrose infamously found that out the hard way at Sonoma back in 2010.  He probably still wakes up at night in Tasmania, angry with himself over that.

The first stage was a Creed benefit.  He was way better than anyone else and the broadcast never really pointed that.  In the 27 laps between the restart from the first caution (the aforementioned track blocker), and the second one (Natalie Decker getting spun out by Jordan Anderson), he pulled out to a seven-second lead.  That's insane.

Also, this has nothing to do with the broadcast, but Decker apparently complained about Anderson spinning her out on the radio afterwards.  She claimed that she "moved him like a nice person" prior to getting dumped.  I have no idea what that means, or even whether that's possible or not.

Since it was in the 40s Friday night, rubber wasn't getting put down on the track.  As a result, you had terrible tire issues.  Tires cording after less than 50 laps.  It was ugly.  Viewers got good shots of this.  Unfortunately, this is a known issue at Martinsville to Goodyear.  It's just the temperature.  They need track temperatures around 70-75 degrees minimum for it to take rubber.  They've had trouble getting that in day races in recent years.

In addition to the heavy tire wear, there were a series of left rear tire failures throughout the weekend.  NBC made it sound like it was side-to-side contact that caused all of them.  At least some of them Friday night could be explained in such a fashion.

This is one of the reasons why I was surprised that tires weren't given the coverage Sunday that they were even during the Xfinity race broadcast Saturday.  I wasn't expecting a situation similar to Friday night to occur Sunday afternoon.  Had that happened, it would have been a calamity.  Basically, NASCAR wouldn't have allocated enough tires for each team to get through the race in that circumstance.  As it stands, everyone went through pretty much everything they had during the race.

Probably one of the biggest stories of the night was Austin Hill laying an egg.  First, the truck wasn't handling well, dropping Hill from the front row at the start to outside the top 20 and a lap down.  Then, the engine turned traitor.  Pretty much everything that could go wrong did.

FOX Sports 1 provided a decent amount of coverage of this since they had a helmet cam on Hill for the race.  I couldn't really tell what was wrong with the engine, but the handling was pretty bad.  You don't drop from second to 24th in 50 laps at Martinsville unless you get a flat tire or you're having significant issues.

Viewers also dealt with the disadvantage of not having the booth on-site quite a bit.  You had a bunch of incidents happen and the first notice you got of them was when the yellow would come out.  You'd wait a couple of seconds, then you'd see a cut to what happened.  Quite simply, there's no substitute to having eyes at the track.

Post-race coverage was somewhat limited.  Viewers heard from race winner Grant Enfinger and fellow Championship 4 participant Zane Smith.  We also heard from Enfinger's ThorSport Racing teammates Matt Crafton and Ben Rhodes, who failed to advance.  Didn't hear anything from Creed or Brett Moffitt.

In Creed's case, I'm not sure what happened.  Perhaps he was upset about getting dumped late in the race.  As for Moffitt, he was forced to retire from the event due to crash damage on lap 192.  Perhaps he wasn't out of the Infield Care Center before FOX Sports 1's broadcast ended.

Overall, the broadcast was frustrating at times, mainly for the reasons noted above.  There was a substantial focus on the playoff contenders Friday night, but it wasn't as all-encompassing as what you got on NBC.  You could get the coverage you deserved if you were not in the playoffs.

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