Circuit of the Americas brought some new (or returning, depending on how you look at it) race mechanics. The abolition of stage breaks opened things up quite a bit and was actually quite a joy to watch. Of course, the way the natural cautions actually fell, all three races technically did have a stage break. We also had a full house on Sunday.
During the Ambetter Health 400 broadcast, FOX announced that they were going to have a four-man booth with both Kurt Busch and Guenther Steiner. Already, you were looking at a pretty busy broadcast. Then, they made an announcement Thursday on NASCAR RaceHub.
Yes, adding Chase Elliott to the broadcast (from his vacation property in Colorado, I guess) technically made for a five-man booth. I was rather worried when I heard this.
Originally, this was going to entail Elliott only being on the broadcast during stage two. But on Sunday Elliott showed up on the broadcast on lap 3 and hung around to the finish. Effectively, you had five people on the call for almost the whole race. It was a bit of a mess.
Clint Bowyer seemed to be dominating the commentary by virtue of being the loudest. Some of his ways of engaging Steiner came off as weird. There was a lot of discussion about fuel mileage, which was a legitimate story Sunday. Then, he tried to engage Steiner by trying to compare that to Formula 1, where there is no refueling. Under present rules in F1, running low on fuel is nearly impossible to do since the car has to be full at the start and mileage is so much better now. Such an argument would have made more sense in 1988 when fuel capacity had been cut and running out of fuel before the finish was a real thing.
Elliott seemed to be in great spirits Sunday and was able to contribute quite a bit from his lair. He also seemed happier than we normally see him. I don’t really know why that would be.
Regardless, I hope FOX doesn’t have a broadcast like they did Sunday again. Just too many people trying to get in there. The potential for people to trip over themselves is too high.
There were other problems as well during the race. One was the heat issues. Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman both had cool suit failures during the race that roasted them good. Jenson Button was whipped by the end of the race and considered pulling out due to heat exhaustion.
Broadcast-wise, viewers really didn’t know about these cool suit…
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