NBC Contends With More Weather In Nashville

Once again, the weather made a complete mess of things for the NASCAR Cup Series.

The Cup Series made its NBC debut in 2024, but the weather affected all of it.

For example, there was not supposed to be any pre-race coverage on Sunday (June 30). However, the U.S. Senior Open at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island ended up in a rain delay. As a result, NBC chose to leave Rhode Island 15 minutes early and go to Nashville Superspeedway. It should be noted that the coverage was always scheduled to move to the Golf Channel at 3:30 p.m. ET, so with nothing going on, NBC made the move early.

I was grateful for that, even though my cable didn’t really want to cooperate since a thunderstorm moved through at my house right when this happened. The bonus coverage gave viewers a few driver interviews that we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

Now, I knew going in that the weather was going to be an issue. What we got was actually better than what I thought could have been possible. However, we saw where NBC Sports’ true alliances stand

The 81-minute red flag that came out on lap 136 really messed things up. Granted, the way this race actually played out, it still wouldn’t have been done by 7:30 p.m. ET. However, that 7:30 p.m. end time for NBC was a much harder out than normal.

As you likely know by now, NBC Sports shifted the race to USA Network at 7:30 p.m. ET to make way for the final night of the U.S. Olympic Trials. Granted, there was a world record set in the Women’s 400m Hurdles by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, but it still bites that NBC made it so clear where its allegiances lie. That’s why we’re having the Olympic Break this year that business-wise, makes absolutely no sense for NASCAR.

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but the dead of summer is the time of year in which NASCAR should never take a week off. This is its time to shine. There are no NFL games that count, the NBA and NHL are in their offseasons. You just have baseball to contend with.

Unfortunately, we have what we have. For quite a few people, they couldn’t watch Sunday’s race after 7:30 p.m. ET.

At least viewers were given something of a heads-up for the move. Rick Allen first mentioned the move at 7:03 p.m. ET right after a NonStop commercial break on lap 176. The swap-over occurred during the sixth caution, which was for Riley Herbst’s crash, on lap 208.

Weather-wise, NBC was proactive in informing viewers that the…