At Michigan International Speedway, anything can happen.
That includes weather. The whole weekend was a nightmare with rain causing delays all three days. That includes the FireKeepers Casino 400, which was delayed to Monday (Aug. 19) after 51 laps.
For whatever reason Sunday, NASCAR chose not to move the start of the race up much, if at all. As a result, the rains showed up for the first time during the pace laps. That in turn led to a two-hour break.
During that time, viewers got a series of interviews with crew chiefs and drivers. Eventually, USA cut to last week’s Cook Out 400 from Richmond Raceway, which had some enhancements. A chyron was added to indicate that Austin Dillon had lost the use of his winning privileges in regards to the playoffs. They also bleeped Joey Logano’s interview. Viewers got periodic updates from the track as well.
Speaking of Dillon, the whole mess surrounding Richmond took center stage during Countdown to Green. That didn’t necessarily surprise me since it was just about the only thing being discussed in NASCAR over the past week. The penalties were described and Dillon got some on-air time to discuss his thoughts.
Of course, knowing that Richard Childress Racing has appealed the suspensions and will present its case Wednesday, things could be quite different once we get to Daytona.
Given the small amount of time that they get for pre-race programming these days, I didn’t really want them to spend much time on the Dillon mess Sunday. If they did that, they wouldn’t have had much time to actually preview the race.
It was a similar setup during the red flag on lap 51. We got a few interviews before everyone bunkered down in their motorcoaches. It was 6:10 p.m. ET when the race was postponed to Monday. I was fine with the coverage that we got here. Just wish the race started earlier so that we didn’t have to deal with this for the second year in a row.
When USA’s broadcast started at 11 a.m. ET Monday, the cars were already on the track. They barely had time to introduce themselves before talking about what Denny Hamlin’s crew had to do to fix the undercarriage of his car after his spin into the grass Sunday.
Monday’s broadcast seemed to be filled with bad luck. Two of the three biggest stories of the race occurred during Non-Stop commercial breaks.
The second issue will end up being the moment for which…
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