Mid-June in NASCAR marks a number of changes for NASCAR on TV.
The FOX Sports portion of the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series seasons is now complete, although the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will remain on FOX Sports 1 for the remainder of the year.
In place of FOX Sports is NBC Sports, back for the 10th and final year of their current deal. As you know, there is one big change this year. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is no longer with NBC Sports.
Earnhardt’s contract expired at the end of 2023.
While they did attempt to hammer out a new contract, it just wasn’t meant to be. Earlier this year, Earnhardt signed a deal that will see him work as an analyst for Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery starting in 2025. For now, he’s focusing on team ownership (via JR Motorsports), his podcast network and businesses.
For this season, it is a bit of a throwback.
At least for this past weekend, they went with the Rick Allen-Jeff Burton-Steve Letarte trio in the booth. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same lineup that NBC used from 2015-2017 before Earnhardt retired from driving.
Generally speaking, I always thought that this trio worked well together in the booth. Sunday was no different.
Likely the first thing that you noticed Sunday evening when you tuned into the USA Network was a completely different feel to the broadcast as compared to what we’ve gotten from FOX Sports over the past four months. That feel was evident on Countdown to Green.
The pre-race show was fairly brief.
It reminded me of what we’ve seen from NBC Sports with IndyCar Live, the pre-race coverage prior to NTT IndyCar Series races. Roughly 15-20 minutes of coverage prior to opening ceremonies. I would have liked to have more, but we got a couple of interviews, coverage of the big stories of the weekend, a piece on what it means for Iowa Speedway to have the NASCAR Cup Series in town and more.
There are a group of fans that are perfectly fine with what we got. It eliminated a lot of the shenanigans you often get on NASCAR RaceDay. No grid walks with silly questions. While it’s obvious that everyone is enjoying themselves, they’re serious about their work.
They also advertised special insider access for Kim Coon and Marty Snider on top of pit boxes during stage 2. That ultimately amounted to the two of them being up on Corey LaJoie and Christopher Bell’s pit boxes and getting inside information in…
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