For NBC, Sunday (July 21) afternoon should have been one of the biggest days of the year for its NASCAR coverage.
The NASCAR Cup Series was back on the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Even in the leanest years, the Brickyard 400 could be counted on to be a decent ratings getter.
Going in, you would have thought that there would have been more pre-race coverage. However, only about 16 minutes were allotted on Countdown to Green prior to the opening ceremonies.
If you don’t have cable, you couldn’t have seen most of the pre-race coverage because NBC broke into programming with news of President Joe Biden deciding to drop out of the presidential race. For the sake of this column, I’ll state this upfront. Frontstretch is not a political website. We’re not here to give political opinions on why Biden made his decision. We’re here to cover motorsports. As a result, we will stick to the facts of the matter.
The special report on NBC cut into Countdown to Green two minutes into the broadcast. The broadcast ended up being sent over to USA Network while NBC News covered the news. I checked to see if there was any notice given of the move ahead of time, but there was none.
Should Countdown to Green have been moved to USA Network? Given the nature of the breaking news, yes, I think so. That kind of situation doesn’t happen every day and there was a public interest in the story that is significantly greater than the Brickyard 400. My issue here was that there was no notice given as to where the NASCAR coverage was going. I just guessed in real time that NBC would put it on USA Network and it did.
The report was relatively short and the coverage was back on NBC before the green flag. The first segment of the race was simulcast on both NBC and USA Network before it went back exclusive to NBC after the first commercial break of the race.
Racing-wise, it is very difficult to compare Sunday’s race to the previous races on the oval. The last two Cup races on the oval were with the high-drag configuration of the Gen 6 car. My memories of the 2020 race involve a couple of guys driving off to a huge lead and Bubba Wallace gaining six positions in a commercial break (10th to fourth) and it not being acknowledged.
NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that there were more than 19 passes per lap Sunday. That is a higher number of passes per lap than the previous five Brickyard 400s. Lead changes (18) were the most since 2013….
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