Friday night brought the Camping World Truck Series back in action at Daytona. An entry of 45 was whittled down to 36 trucks that went out to do battle. And wreck. A
bunch.
Before we get there, we must make reference to the nightmare that was Tim Viens' attempt to qualify. His truck apparently started, but would not go forward. Eventually, the CMI Motorsports crew tried to push him
off. They were met by a surprise.
That is the entire driveshaft coming out to play here. Viens was clearly embarrassed by the failure and you could just see the dejection in how he walked back to the Truck garage during the qualifying
broadcast.
I've never seen that in NASCAR before. Saw it once during a warmup day at Lebanon Valley Speedway for a new team in the Pure Stock class years ago. They told me that day that a pin fell out that held the driveshaft
in. The car was undamaged, but they were done for the day because they didn't have another pin.
That said, onto the broadcast. For the Camping World Truck Series, Daytona is their biggest race. They went all out on pieces. One saw Regan Smith interviewing Sheldon Creed about how his career has progressed
after winning the championship last year. There was also discussion about music preference, comparing the title to winning a Gold Medal in the X Games and mullets. Because we're talking about Creed here. Why not?
Jamie Little did a sit-down interview with Hailie Deegan, who I have no doubt will receive an outsized amount of coverage this season. Here, the topic was her overall development as a driver and her upbringing.
Development-wise, Deegan appears to have the right idea about how to go about things. She's realistic. That's really been the case for a number of years.
In the race itself, FOX Sports 1 had an in-truck camera on here and she got a lot of coverage during the race. Some of it was warranted, some not. I think we're just going to have to get used to
it.
For Friday night's race, Jamie McMurray joined Michael Waltrip and Vince Welch in the booth. Honestly, McMurray does have experience in the series (granted, it was 20 years ago). I feel that he is a better analyst than
Waltrip. Having said that, Waltrip is nowhere near as annoying as he once was.
Also of note, the broadcast noted that Waltrip has lost 50 pounds. As you can see above, there is a reason for that weight loss. We'll see how he does in SRX. I'm not sure how it will affect his TV schedule since
there are a couple of conflicts. We could do without himself doing interviews in short shorts, though.
Due to the amount of wrecks, it was really hard to get into a rhythm. There were no green-flag segments longer than 16 laps all night. That kept everyone close together.
Certain drivers simply had no luck, like Derek Kraus. A bad qualifying effort forced him to take a provisional. Then, he got wrecked on the start. Then, he got hit on pit road. Then, he cut his left rear
tire. Finally, a cut right rear tire put him in the wall and out. Brutal.
Post-race coverage was quite brief due to the 10 cautions in the race. Much like the Xfinity broadcast I wrote about yesterday, viewers only got interviews with the top two finishers (Ben Rhodes and Jordan Anderson) before
FOX Sports 1 left Daytona.
Overall, a race like Friday night's is relatively easy to cover. Show the on-track action and keep track of the shenanigans. And there were a lot of those. They didn't have the best shots of the crash at the
finish. As a result, a lot of people couldn't figure out how Spencer Boyd's truck had the engine come out. It was the dreaded grass that did it. Of course, the ongoing ride height issues in NASCAR are another discussion for another time.
I felt that FOX Sports 1 did ok Friday night, but I'm really not feeling a Welch-Waltrip booth for the rest of the year. McMurray propped them up last Friday night, but that won't always be the
case.
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.
