NBC Covers Martinsville Shenanigans Well

Oh boy. Here we go again.

We had heck go down Sunday (Nov. 3) at Martinsville Speedway. If you’re late to the party, we’ve got a penalty being handed down to Christopher Bell for wall riding and potential manipulation of the race.

This whole thing angers me.

I vehemently dislike the idea of the playoffs existing in the first place and this situation only puts more fuel on the fire. It makes me think, “Why can’t we have nice things?” Regardless of what happens, NASCAR will have to make some kind of statement on what the deuce happened at some point this week before it goes to Phoenix Raceway. It has to.

Toward the end of the race, Ryan Blaney was pulling away from the rest of the leaders to take a well-deserved victory. Meanwhile, NBC had its triple box in use to cover both William Byron, who was trying to keep himself far enough ahead to get in the Championship 4 on points and Bell in addition to Blaney.

Byron lost positions to Austin Cindric and Denny Hamlin and was doing his darndest to hold off Austin Dillon…or so it seemed. Then, Ross Chastain entered the conversation. Suddenly, Byron was seemingly blocking both lines to prevent either driver from passing, which bunched up the pack.

Bell, who was running 19th, ran up on this pack just as they caught Bubba Wallace, who apparently had a flat tire. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen evidence of it other than Wallace going up the hill on the final lap and radio chatter.

Bell overdrove turn 3, got into the wall and then rode it to 18th on-track. Had that stood, Bell would have won the Round of 8 and earned the spot in the Championship 4 on a tiebreaker over Byron.

Then, we sat and waited. It seemed like a lot longer of a wait than it was. In the 10 minutes after the announcers initially talked to Bell and Byron, NBC went through the video and audio that it had multiple times. While doing that, it aired some questionable radio chatter from a couple of the Chevrolet teams.

Now, we know that NASCAR has that audio because it has all the audio. There’s a reason why it doesn’t allow teams to use encrypted digital communications from the driver and/or spotter to the crew during races. It’s not just so that fans can listen in.

The questionable audio opened up Pandora’s box to even more of a nightmare scenario for NASCAR. If all of this was going on Sunday, what does it do? Ideally, you would have liked NASCAR to make the call that it did Sunday quicker…