Monday ended up being a two-fer at Bristol Motor Speedway for the assembled race fans.  Prior to the Food City Dirt Race, the Camping World Truck Series raced for 150 laps around the half-mile dirt track.  Martin Truex Jr. administered a whooping on the field, but how did FOX Sports 1 cover this butt-kicking?

Unlike the Cup race, there was no real pre-race coverage.  The engines were cranked prior to the telecast on FOX Sports 1 starting.  As a result, when the telecast started, the trucks were already on their pace laps.  This move is not necessarily unexpected for delayed Truck races, but not ideal.

For this race, Joey Logano joined Michael Waltrip and Vince Welch in the booth.  Logano spent the race in learning mode, looking at what worked and what didn't.  His commentary was based around what he was seeing with how the track changed.  As you probably know by now, Logano made good use of that knowledge to win later in the day.

Much like the Cup race, the race started with some good multi-groove racing with the track still relatively moist.  There weren't the same overheating problems at first that you saw in the Cup race, though.

Much like the Cup broadcast, I found the camera shots to be a little underwhelming.  This wasn't just an issue during the race, but all weekend.  The JR Heffner crash from Friday is another example.  Heffner took a big hit on the inside wall due to some kind of mechanical failure and you could barely see it.  

I'm also quite unclear as to whether Heffner was driving one of Jordan Anderson's trucks in Bristol, or one of his own.  This was never clarified.  I know for a fact that Heffner has purchased at least three trucks over the years via auctions.  The truck he raced at Eldora multiple times came from the former MRD Motorsports.  He also bought one chassis from Kevin Harvick Inc. and crashed that at Loudon (he eventually repaired it).  No secret underground sources here.  Heffner told me this himself at Lebanon Valley in the past.

Probably the biggest moment of the race was when John Hunter Nemechek spun in turn 1 after contact from Matt Crafton.  The cameras were tight on Nemechek, so much so that you couldn't tell what happened to send Derek Kraus directly into the Mobil 1 Toyota.

Needless to say, Nemechek was angry as heck afterwards.  Replays showed that Matt Crafton tapped him from behind to spin him out.  10 seconds or so later, Kraus crashed into him.  FOX Sports 1 aired "audio" from Nemechek's radio where he ranted, raved and apparently threatened to throat punch Crafton.  Of course, that was in-between bleeps that seemed more at home on a late-1990s episode of Jerry Springer.  Finally, just to add insult to injury, one of the AMR safety trucks slid on fluids and hit Nemechek's truck, pushing it into the inside wall.  Nemechek was too busy angrily gesturing to Crafton to care about that, despite the fact that he actually came quite close to getting hit by the sliding truck.  Even though NASCAR didn't fine him (at least not that we know about), I wouldn't be surprised if something does come out of this.

The crews were fired up as well.  The NASCAR Trucks Twitter account caught this exchange between Nemechek and Crafton's crews by Nemechek's hauler.  This did not make the broadcast and I only saw that it happened while I was writing this column.

In his interview outside of the Infield Care Center, Nemechek seemed much more calm.  That said, he was upset with Kraus' spotter.  I felt that FOX Sports 1 was a little slow in giving viewers what would be the definitive looks at this incident.  Those would be from Crafton's truck and something that captured Kraus losing control.  They made it sound like Kraus got hit by Timothy Peters, but it didn't really look that way to me.

It seemed like everyone was unclear on the pit rules for this race.  Nemechek, Stewart Friesen and Grant Enfinger all skipped pit stops for track position.  It seemed like they thought they were going to be able to use their fresh tires later in the race, but that was not allowed by NASCAR.  It's like no one listened during the Drivers' Meeting or their crew chiefs didn't look at their cards.

Outside of the Nemechek wreck and blow-up, Martin Truex Jr. was likely the biggest surprise of the day.  The man had all but no dirt experience entering the weekend and had no idea what to expect.  He ended up stomping everyone by sweeping the stages in the truck race after having not raced one in nearly 15 years.  Most of the broadcast saw the booth at a loss to explain Truex's form.

In addition, the booth seemed to be convinced that this race was Kyle Larson's to lose.  Yes, he kicked butt cheeks on a regular basis last year in whatever he chose to race after NASCAR suspended him.  That doesn't mean that he's guaranteed to win.  This weekend ultimately turned out horrible for him.

While Larson was quick early, he knew that he didn't have the truck to truly contend on Monday.  He stated that on the radio despite moving up from 28th to around 16th in the first 15 laps.  Getting stuck back there meant that he was right in the middle of the action.  That action bit him multiple times.  Having said that, the wreck that took him out of the race was more or less a fluke thing.  Mike Marlar had issues and Larson couldn't avoid him.

Having covered dirt racing for the last 11 years, situations like what happened to Larson can happen, even if it seems inexplicable.  It's hard to stop on a loose surface.

As compared to the Cup race, viewers didn't seem to get as much racing for position.  However, that was not necessarily FOX Sports 1's fault.  Nearly three-eighths of the race (56 of 150 laps) were run under caution.  The segments under green were extremely short with no green flag runs longer than the first 13 laps of the race.

Post-race coverage was relatively brief.  Viewers got interviews with the top three finishers (Truex, Ben Rhodes and Raphael Lessard) before FOX Sports 1 left Bristol.  As far as I know, there were no throat punches exchanged after the race.

Overall, I felt that this was not a particularly competitive race, but ok to watch.  It just seems like Logano was the one commentator truly paying attention.  We've already seen what he managed to do with his knowledge from the event.