The playoffs are underway.
Swell. I’m not a fan of the playoffs for a variety of reasons. Some of those have to do with them existing at all. Others are based on how the playoffs affect broadcasts.
Thankfully, the playoffs started this year at Atlanta Motor Speedway. A pack-racing event generally is broadcast in a specific way and isn’t as heavily affected by the existence of the playoffs.
That said, if you watched on Sunday, it didn’t take long for the playoffs to make their presence known during “Countdown to Green.” There were two topics covered: the playoffs, and the finish back in February, of which Daniel Suarez recounted his steps to victory.
As compared to the past couple of weeks, Sunday’s broadcast didn’t quite have the quality control that we’ve become used to since NBC Sports took over in June.
Likely the biggest example of this was how the Kyle Larson crash was covered live.
Now, to be fair, I have no issue with how the booth handled the live call of this wreck. It was pretty much perfect.
However, it took quite a while to figure out that Chase Briscoe was even in this crash. You didn’t know that he was in it until the replay. It was only at that point that they realized that two playoff contenders were eliminated in the crash.
That scenario didn’t really sit right with me. I think part of the reasoning for this was the low camera shot in turn 2 for the wreck which meant that Larson’s car was obscured by smoke when Briscoe hit him. I couldn’t make out that Briscoe was in the wreck until the replay was shown.
Some of my colleagues were not exactly complimentary of Dave Burns at the infield care center. For lack of better words, they thought he was a jerk to Larson.
The last question about the points, we could have done without. That was obvious. Larson was about as forthcoming as he could be and really didn’t have anything else to say after the second question.
I guess that the producers wanted something more out of Larson, hence the extra questions. The extra questions yielded bupkis.
Later on, they tried to do a little bit of cross-promotion for the upcoming IMSA race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However, someone goofed.
Let it be known that the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks is Sept. 22 and will be split between NBC and Peacock.
I will be there to bring you the action, but the schedule should not…
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