Motorsport News

NBC Starts the Round of 8 Much Better

NBC Starts the Round of 8 Much Better

October can be a decent time of year to go to Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The weather cooperated for a pleasant day at the track for fans. It wasn’t so pleasant for the playoff drivers.

This race will likely be best remembered for the big wreck on lap 89 when Martin Truex Jr. appeared to wash up the track into Chase Elliott. From there, it was on.

The clip above is exactly how viewers saw the wreck break out.

Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to get launched into a roll off of the mini-oval at Las Vegas. It’s been there since the track was reconfigured and we’ve seen some wild incidents. Joey Gase popped a big wheelie there back in 2011.

Unlike Charlotte Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas already has a short track on the property (The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which pre-dates the tri-oval as it opened in 1985). There was discussion on the broadcast about the grass, but the grass didn’t cause the flip. The banked turn in the infield did.

Most of the replays were focused on Tyler Reddick’s roll, which more or less makes sense. After all, you don’t see a car get upside down at Las Vegas all that often. However, there were additional drivers involved.

It took a while to see that Ryan Blaney was involved as he hit the wall while trying to avoid Brad Keselowski. That resulted in at least one toe link needing to be changed. Additional repairs resulted in Blaney finishing eight laps down.

What we didn’t see at all was what happened to Austin Cindric. He was apparently involved in the incident, but I couldn’t tell you where. All I can tell you for sure is that he was involved and the DVP clock expired on him, ending his day.

It seems like NBC Sports doesn’t have quite as many cameras at the track as in the past. More and more of the incidents (the aforementioned Reddick crash being the exception to the rule) seemingly aren’t covered well with their cameras. As a result, the broadcasters have become much more dependent on the NASCAR Drive cameras to tell what happened.

I’m not going to dispute that it is good to have these cameras available to the broadcasters because it is a good thing. However, we’re getting toward crutch territory here.

Prior to the Reddick crash, Austin Dillon took a nasty hit in turn 3 after contact from Daniel Hemric. NBC’s cameras didn’t get a good view of the contact. I critique races on a…

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