The Daytona 500 is the biggest race of the season for NASCAR in more ways than one. Not only is it the richest race on the calendar with a purse of over $30 million, but it is something of a sign of how the rest of the season is likely to go, TV-wise.
Unfortunately, Sunday's (Feb. 16) race was marred by rain again. For the fourth time in six years, the race was significantly delayed. The weather forecast on FOX 35 out of Orlando back on Friday pretty much nailed what we got on Sunday. Based on that, I predicted that the race would likely end around 8:30 p.m. ET when we made our picks for who would win (mind you, the time that the race would conclude was not asked for).
In response, NASCAR moved up the start of the race by a full hour, something that it has the authority to do so with proper notice to the networks. Ultimately, that move didn't really do much as it rained less than 10 minutes after the green flag.
With more than three hours to kill, what did FOX do? The announcers interviewed a bunch of people. According to their stats, 26 different drivers were interviewed over roughly two hours before they left Daytona International Speedway to provide bonus coverage of last year's race.
At first, the coverage started decent. Yes, you were bummed that FOX did it, but it was satisfying. Then, it became really obvious that FOX was getting bored. It's one thing for that to seem like it was so, it's another for Chris Myers and Jamie McMurray to admit that they were bored.
In addition, I know that I've mentioned this in the past, but why does FOX continually have Myers play a dolt on NASCAR broadcasts? He is never like this anywhere else, but have him on a NASCAR Cup Series broadcast and all of a sudden, you get things like "we kid because we care" and other stupid things. It drives me nuts.
This is a production issue since Myers cannot be that willfully stupid. He's been with FOX's NASCAR coverage since 2001 (he's one of three on-air personalities, along with Mike Joy and Larry McReynolds, who are left from when FOX first got NASCAR rights). In that time, you will learn things. He has other responsibilities outside of NASCAR, but that shouldn't result in him wearing blinders for NASCAR coverage. Someone is requiring him to play dumb on broadcasts and it has to stop.
The big story in the background of NASCAR RaceDay was the fact that President Trump was going to make an appearance in Daytona. As compared to the last time this happened (2020), he did even less (you might remember that he gave the command to start engines back then).
Trump did an interview with Jamie Little on pit road after the National Anthem. Then, he hopped in The Beast and took a couple of laps around the track. The broadcast made it sound like he was going to hang around for stage one, but I'm not sure that was ever the plan. He was on Air Force One and leaving Daytona Beach pretty soon after the rain came.
Compared to 2020, this appearance was more political, especially during his interview. Generally speaking, FOX Sports doesn't allow political discussion to seep into broadcasts. However, I felt that Sunday's broadcast got uncomfortably close to that.
FOX went all out promoting some of its new programming in Daytona. That included inviting Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon down there to hang out to promote their new TV deal with INDYCAR that starts in two weeks. Neither has ever driven in NASCAR, although Dixon is open to the idea.
It seems like FOX frontloaded all of its feature pieces Sunday since I'm unsure whether or not it's going to have time to air any beyond this past weekend for the rest of its portion of the season. I'll be brief here in describing them.
I'd argue that the best one saw Clint Bowyer sit down with Kyle Larson. The discussion was centered around his lack of success at Daytona compared to...basically everything else, overall aggression and how he wants to be perceived as a race car driver.
In all honesty, Larson is kind of quiet and the whole mess that he got himself into back in 2020 due to being impressionable around the wrong people has made him quieter to the public at large. Outside of his racing exploits, you don't hear much out of him. Here, he basically stated that he wants to be considered the best race car driver in the world. That's going to be hard to prove to the world at large, but he's pretty dang good right now.
Another feature had Kevin Harvick sitting down with Joey Logano and Roger Penske. The topics here centered around the thought process around bringing Logano to Penske for 2013, a move that some commentators, such as Rusty Wallace (as noted in the piece) were skeptical about at the time since Logano had never finished higher than 17th in points.
After his time with Joe Gibbs Racing ended, Logano wanted a fresh start and Penske needed something good since the No. 22 team was supposed to be AJ Allmendinger's for the long haul, but Allmendinger failed a drug test the previous year and was dropped.
The worst piece that made the broadcast was a montage in celebration of FOX's 25th year broadcasting the Cup Series. I get it, you'd want to celebrate that. But, why on earth would you include the aftermath of Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash in the piece? That is highly inappropriate. Heck no.
I found the race coverage to be fairly decent, although it should be stated that superspeedway races are the easiest events to cover as a whole. Even Atlanta Motor Speedway next weekend will be more difficult to cover than Daytona.
I did have gripes, though. One is the fact that FOX seemed to be rather slow in informing viewers about drivers who had problems. For example, Jimmie Johnson made an unscheduled pit stop before the end of stage two, took two tires and managed to not get lapped before the stage end. That allowed him to take fuel only and put himself into contention.
I wanted to know more there. Remember that he had fuel pickup issues during his Duel Thursday night. It was unclear whether that was solved or not (I don't think it was during practice on Friday, at the minimum).
Allmendinger was the first driver out due to an engine failure. We never heard anything about it other than Joy noting that the car was being pushed behind the wall. Never heard anything else. FOX was also slow in indicating that Helio Castroneves had retired from the race.
Likely the most notable of the bunch involved Kyle Busch. FOX showed him being towed back to the garage after wrecking on lap 186. Under the new Damaged Vehicle Policy rules, he could make repairs and return. He did and we saw him with sparks coming out of his No. 8 Chevrolet. Then you didn't hear anything, then he was out.
Busch said a little bit to FOX, but not too much. He said next to nothing to MRN Radio's Alan Cavanna. Then, he more or less ranted about the situation to the media.
Since the race went long by more than four hours, post-race coverage was fairly brief. Viewers got a few interviews, including with race winner William Byron before leaving for Family Guy.
Sunday's broadcast had some good moments. However, there are things that FOX needs to fix. It needs to refocus on the basics of acquiring information and bringing that information to viewers. If there's a debris caution, find the debris (FOX cameras failed to do multiple times Sunday).
That's all for this week. Next weekend, NASCAR's national-level series travel to Atlanta for another tripleheader weekend. TV listings can be found here.
In next week's edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we'll look at FOX's broadcast of the Ambetter Health 400 from Atlanta and cover other things that come up. In the Critic's Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter, we will cover The CW's official debut on Saturday from Daytona.
Also, remember that the new coverage rules for the Cup Series regarding practice and qualifying start this weekend. That coverage can now be found on Amazon Prime Video.
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