Jeepers.
In recent years, there has been a substantial gulf between coverage of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series during the first half of the season and the second half. I would argue that there is no bigger example of this gulf than what we saw Saturday night from Knoxville Raceway.
This is made worse by the fact that Saturday was also the season opener for the Camping World SRX Series from Five Flags Speedway in Florida. Due to a conflict of interest, I cannot write about SRX on this website, and especially not about its broadcasts. However, what I can say is that there is a difference in what is being brought to the table.
SRX has on-site commentators, multiple pit and roving reporters and a substantial number of on-site cameras. FOX Sports 1 didn’t have all of that Saturday night. It chose not to send its broadcast booth to Knoxville. This meant that Jamie Little, Trevor Bayne and Phil Parsons were calling the race from FOX Sports’ Charlotte headquarters. That is an obvious downgrade.
It seemed like there weren’t that many cameras on-site in Knoxville last weekend. As a result, viewers missed a lot of stuff, including an unforgivable amount of important content. Because of that, the booth looked clueless at times, because things were happening that they didn’t even know about that they should have known to cover.
The most obvious thing that the FOX Sports 1 broadcast missed was Jessica Friesen’s flip on lap 57 in turn 4. The cameras only caught Jessica’s No. 62 caught up on the infield berm and the commentators just thought she had spun out. The reality was much different, as this segment of Knoxville Raceway’s own highlight clip shows.
I just don’t know what to say here. Good cripes. Why, people? This is day one stuff. You have to get footage of this stuff. You cannot be scooped by the track itself and one dude with his cell phone!
Speaking of the one dude with his cell phone, his name is Jordan Tiegs. He apparently caught a lot of the stuff that FOX Sports 1 did not from his grandstand seat. For instance, Brett Moffitt dropped out of the race late after what appeared (on the broadcast) to be contact with Tanner Gray. Not so much. He dang near flipped his truck right at the start-finish line. This incident also explains the left side damage on Moffitt’s No. 22 that Phil Parsons couldn’t find an explanation for on the broadcast.
@Brett_Moffitt on his side down…
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