Leigh Diffey Brings the Goods to Daytona

Daytona International Speedway in the middle of the summer is always going to be a big deal in NASCAR. While the race isn’t on the Fourth of July weekend, or the final race of the regular season anymore, it is still a race that people eagerly anticipate.

TV-wise, it was a race to look forward to even more than normal. On Tuesday, NBC Sports officially announced something everyone had known for weeks: Leigh Diffey would be taking over in the broadcast booth for Rick Allen.

Diffey brings a different attitude to the broadcast booth than Allen does. You never have to worry about whether he’s enthusiastic about what he’s covering. He will be. The call of the finish from Saturday (Aug. 24) night proves that.

What was Jeff Burton doing during this sequence? He was clearly jacked up.

Clearly, he spent a lot of time preparing for this race, likely more than you’d see with many other on-air commentators. This level of preparation is possible every week from everyone. In 2018, Jeff Burton showed me some of the statistical sheets that they get before each event.

He’s also had to build up a decent amount of communication with the drivers. Remember that Diffey hadn’t called a Cup race prior to Saturday night since 2017. Only 15 of the 39 drivers who competed in the last race he called were even in the race Saturday night. The others have either cut back to part-time, retired or simply been forced out of the sport for any number of reasons.

Diffey also worked pretty well with Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte. They were his boothmates the last time he worked a Cup race.

Diffey fit right into the broadcast. It was like he’d been there for years. Then again, at this point, he’s been calling races for more than 20 years, so it really shouldn’t be that surprising that he was good. He also seemed sharper in the booth than Allen. You didn’t see him making mistakes, which seem to happen regularly.

Now, I should state that Daytona is Daytona. A drafting race is generally one of the easier races to call. Saturday night in Darlington will be a different story.

The big story entering Saturday night was the aerodynamic tendencies of the Next Gen car following Corey LaJoie’s blowover at Michigan International Speedway. NASCAR mandated an additional vertical fin on the right side of the rear window to help prevent that. At the time, it didn’t really give any idea what it was going to look like. I don’t think the fin…