In recent years, Phoenix Raceway hasn’t been the most exciting place to watch a NASCAR race. All the focus has been on the championship, which in itself hurts races. There also hasn’t been a lot of passing. Sunday (March 9) was different, and not just because of the on-track action.
As you’re likely aware, Phoenix was a crossover weekend with IndyCar for the NASCAR Cup Series. Fans on Saturday were treated to a doubleheader with 250 laps for the NTT IndyCar Series (which had the most lead changes ever in an IndyCar race there with 18) and the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, while the Cup Series were the headliners.
Thinkin’ Out Loud at Phoenix: Isn’t Racing Much More Fun Without Playoffs?
There was some discussion on the broadcast about how this weekend was about introducing race fans to a form of motorsports that they may not have considered checking out. For some fans, that has some merit. For others, they’ve already been doing that. The second group is the group that gripes about events conflicting with each other so they can’t watch both.
That said, it was very noticeable that IndyCar was in town during Sunday’s broadcast. The most notable sign of that is that Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe joined the broadcast booth for the majority of stage two.
When I saw that on Sunday, I instantly got concerned. A four-person broadcast booth is busy. Five is ridiculous. It could have been a situation in which people talked over each other and you couldn’t understand what was going on. Thankfully, it wasn’t quite like that. The booth asked for Hinchcliffe and Bell’s input on what they were seeing and compared it to their personal racing experiences. In addition, Hinchcliffe was asked to talk about his experiences from his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut in St. Petersburg.
This setup was ultimately not what I feared it could have been, but it was a little distracting at times. In addition to Bell and Hinchcliffe’s booth time, you also had David Malukas, Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden hanging out with Jamie McMurray and Chris Myers in victory lane during the race.
The constant talk about the crossover weekend was in NASCAR RaceDay as well. During that show, Jamie Little sat down with Roger Penske, primarily to talk about the shared weekend. He indicated that by all means, Phoenix has been a success and that IndyCar is hoping to do it again.
Clint Bowyer interviewed the reigning Cup and IndyCar champions (Kyle Larson and Alex Palou) about the crossover and whether either of them would be up to it (apparently, Palou’s game for a NASCAR road race). Here, we learned about how Palou is amazed by the amount of racing that Larson does. Also, they apparently became very talkative. Bowyer described it as “the easiest interview I’ve ever done.”
Sunday was the first Cup race of the year to air on FOX Sports 1. I had feared that there would be a cutback of some of the offerings that we had on the network broadcasts. For example, last year saw full-screen commercials for much of the FS1 races. That will not be the case this year as we only got side-by-side breaks under green.
There was quite a bit more action under green this year compared to last year. You might remember that this race last year had the option tire available.
With 13 fewer laps under green, there were 818 more passes. That meant that there were four more passes per lap. FS1 did a decent job of bringing viewers that action. Yes, there was more of it in and around the restarts, but there was a decent amount away from those restarts as well. There were also split-screen views that allowed viewers to see multiple battles.
The Big 6: Questions Answered After Ryan Blaney Snapped Tyler Reddick’s Win Streak at Phoenix
You had a lot more movement this year since the tires wore a lot more. You also had a lot of tire issues, similar to last fall. It would have been less than what we had in November if it wasn’t for Noah Gragson’s incident.
FS1 had the replay of Gragson’s crash, but the announcers just thought it was a blown tire. Then, three more drivers blew tires (William Byron, Michael McDowell and Connor Zilisch). A fourth driver (Cole Custer) had a piece of debris go through his grille and puncture his radiator, ending his day. Obviously, this was more than just your usual blown tire and the broadcast was really slow in bringing that news to viewers.
While I was pretty sure that something was afoot once the extra blown tires started showing up, there was no notion of broken brake rotor pieces being in play until the broadcast showed a clip of one of the safety crew workers picking up a piece of rotor a few minutes later. We hadn’t even seen any pieces of brake rotor on the track. It seems like the pieces were everywhere since even with these days, it’s unlikely that you’re going to blow tires at 55 mph.
We also never heard from Gragson on the broadcast. Luckily, Frontstretch caught up with Gragson after the crash and he explained what happened.
The 12 cautions on Sunday meant that the race finished 15 minutes after the end of the timeslot. Viewers didn’t get all that much post-race coverage because of that, but we still got interviews with six drivers.
However, the fact that this race was on FS1 showed here. They only brought two pit reporters (Little and Regan Smith) to Phoenix. Smith did much of the work here, doing multiple interviews right in a row. Makes me wish that FOX Sports could have tapped one of its IndyCar pit reporters to stay on for the race.
Why not have Georgia Henneberry be the third reporter on Sunday? While she hasn’t worked a Cup race in the pits before, it’s not like she hasn’t done NASCAR before. She worked the St. Petersburg Truck Series race and did just fine. Also, she would have already been there, so you didn’t have significant additional travel costs.
Overall, the on-track product in general in Phoenix was very good. Phoenix races have been quite lackluster in recent years and we got a good race on Sunday that was quite competitive. Yes, Christopher Bell led 176 laps, but he wasn’t necessarily dominant. He was fallible.
Close but No Cigar for Christopher Bell at Phoenix
The broadcast itself seemed to play a little too much into the whole crossover thing. Yes, I understand that it was a big deal to have the Cup and the IndyCar Series at the same track on the same weekend. However, that cannot drive the entire race broadcast.
I don’t really get what Malukas, McLaughlin and Newgarden added to things with McMurray and Myers. They were just there. Scott Dixon was there as well, but he didn’t join the broadcast.
The racing product was good and the broadcast booth complemented that. The tire issues were covered fairly well. If anything, Sunday was better than November was in that teams had figured out the issues a little better. You didn’t see all that many frontrunners popping tires. The brake rotor issue wasn’t covered all that well, though. That’s likely how the Gragson exploding rotor slipped through the cracks.
In the future, FS1 would do well to scan the track for that type of debris after these failures. Chase Briscoe’s crash appeared to be of a similar nature, but there wasn’t really much discussion of that type about it. It seemed like things occurred a long way from the cameras for much of the day.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend is shaping up to be quite busy. The Cup Series will make its first visit of the year to Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. The IndyCar Series will make its first visit to a new street course in Arlington, Texas. Formula 1 will have its first sprint weekend of the year in China. TV listings can be found here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll cover the broadcast of the Pennzoil 400 and whatever tickles my fancy. We’ll have additional content covered in the Frontstretch Newsletter.
If you have a gripe with me or just want to say something about my critique, feel free to post in the comments below. Even though I can’t always respond, I do read your comments. Also, if you want to “like” me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, please click on the appropriate icons. If you would like to contact either of NASCAR’s media partners, click on either of the links below.
As always, if you choose to contact a network by email, do so in a courteous manner. Network representatives are far more likely to respond to emails that ask questions politely rather than emails full of rants and vitriol.
I would like to know how many passes Cody B. Ware completed during events and also how many times he was passed by other cars.
Why?
Exactly! Who cares? It is a useless stat and the only ones who seem to care about it is NA$CAR and who knows how accurate it is. Why does NA$CAR care? Green flag passes by the inch at Daytona and Talladega? I’d rather know how many times a car was passed which is a better indicator of how a car is running.
I heard them talking about the Indy car stuff but since I didn’t watch that race it just made me shrug. I do watch sometimes but in this case it meant very little