NBC Contends With More Weather In Nashville (2024)

Once again, the weather made a complete mess of things for the NASCAR Cup Series.

The Cup Series made its NBC debut in 2024, but the weather affected all of it.

For example, there was not supposed to be any pre-race coverage on Sunday (June 30). However, the U.S. Senior Open at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island ended up in a rain delay. As a result, NBC chose to leave Rhode Island 15 minutes early and go to Nashville Superspeedway. It should be noted that the coverage was always scheduled to move to the Golf Channel at 3:30 p.m. ET, so with nothing going on, NBC made the move early.

I was grateful for that, even though my cable didn’t really want to cooperate since a thunderstorm moved through at my house right when this happened. The bonus coverage gave viewers a few driver interviews that we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

Now, I knew going in that the weather was going to be an issue. What we got was actually better than what I thought could have been possible. However, we saw where NBC Sports’ true alliances stand

The 81-minute red flag that came out on lap 136 really messed things up. Granted, the way this race actually played out, it still wouldn’t have been done by 7:30 p.m. ET. However, that 7:30 p.m. end time for NBC was a much harder out than normal.

As you likely know by now, NBC Sports shifted the race to USA Network at 7:30 p.m. ET to make way for the final night of the U.S. Olympic Trials. Granted, there was a world record set in the Women’s 400m Hurdles by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, but it still bites that NBC made it so clear where its allegiances lie. That’s why we’re having the Olympic Break this year that business-wise, makes absolutely no sense for NASCAR.

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but the dead of summer is the time of year in which NASCAR should never take a week off. This is its time to shine. There are no NFL games that count, the NBA and NHL are in their offseasons. You just have baseball to contend with.

Unfortunately, we have what we have. For quite a few people, they couldn’t watch Sunday’s race after 7:30 p.m. ET.

At least viewers were given something of a heads-up for the move. Rick Allen first mentioned the move at 7:03 p.m. ET right after a NonStop commercial break on lap 176. The swap-over occurred during the sixth caution, which was for Riley Herbst’s crash, on lap 208.

Weather-wise, NBC was proactive in informing viewers that the weather was coming. As early as about lap 30, you started hearing rumblings about the rain coming to town. Granted, I’m never far away from radar when I watch a race on TV, but having those reminders is key. You don’t want to blindside viewers, which has happened in the past as TV partners like to pretend that it isn’t happening because they don’t want to think about it.

Racing-wise, I felt that NBC did a good job bringing the action to viewers. You saw a lot of split-screen racing and at least one usage of the triple-screen. There seemed to always be a good amount of racing on the screen. This race was never boring to watch, even when Christopher Bell was dominating.

Once again, NBC was embedded with a couple of teams during stage two. This week, the lucky teams were Brad Keselowski’s No. 6 and Chase Elliott’s No. 9. In practice, what we got was more of the same that we’ve had the past couple of weeks. We got restarts covered from their roof cams along with audio from spotters TJ Majors (Keselowski) and Trey Poole (Elliott).

The coverage during the red flag was different than what we had in Loudon. Unlike last week, the rains that came were preceded by lightning. As a result, a complete stopdown was ordered and everyone had to seek shelter.

Unlike Loudon, NBC didn’t stage its reporters in a safe location so that they could continue interviews and/or at-track coverage. The reporters interviewed people associated with the aforementioned embedded teams, and that was it. For most of the rest of the delay, NBC re-aired stage one of the race.

Knowing that this was a much shorter delay than what we got in Loudon, it seemed like it was a bit of a loss. It could have done more once the lightning stop down was removed and the rain stopped. Then again, there’s a good sporting chance that it tried to and all of the drivers were hanging out in their motor coaches and didn’t want to talk.

Toward the end of the race, things started getting loony. First, you had Harrison Burton getting dumped under caution by Carson Hocevar. Naturally, he was very upset about that. I don’t blame him.

The broadcast booth was unsure what caused this whole mess, but Steve Letarte mentioned that NBC was going to try to suss out the root cause of this. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen on the broadcast. My guess is that the production staff couldn’t find any footage.

After the race, Burton indicated in an interview at the infield care center that blocking was to blame for what we saw.

However, this is not the first time that Hocevar has intentionally wrecked someone in the Cup Series.

Last fall, he literally turned his wheel to the right to wreck Ty Gibbs at Martinsville Speedway.

Later, Ross Chastain crashed out of the race on a restart after Kyle Larson clipped the apron in turn 1 and bounced into him.

For much of the race, NBC had been trying to promote an ongoing rivalry between Larson and Denny Hamlin. This was shown by showing (on multiple occasions) replays of prior on-track bouts of contact between the two drivers over the past couple of years.

The coverage of the Chastain incident was more or less couched as Larson trying to get to Hamlin, screwing up, then taking out Chastain in the process. After the race, Larson took responsibility for Chastain’s wreck, but I found this rivalry touting to be a little annoying.

The 31 extra laps that were run Sunday night clearly changed the outcome of the race. No one could possibly argue otherwise.

That said, NBC was on top of the fuel mileage issue from the moment that the leaders made what was supposed to be their final stops on lap 221. It was right on when everyone made their stops and how much they had left in the tank. As a result, there were no surprises when certain drivers had to stop to get more fuel as the laps racked up.

Basically, the race went so long that drivers who were completely screwed by the situation ended up unscrewed. Example: Ryan Blaney.

Had the Austin Cindric incident on lap 299 not occurred, he would have finished 33rd. He walked out of Nashville with a sixth-place finish.

Post-race coverage, despite the race having gone long for nearly two hours, was decent. Viewers got to see a half-dozen post-race interviews along with a check of the points and some analysis before USA Network left Tennessee to go to an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Note: USA Network was literally showing 30 hours straight of SVU that was interrupted by the race).

The demeanor after the race was decidedly surly.

Tyler Reddick, in particular, was pretty unhappy. Haven’t seen him that upset since Texas Motor Speedway. Zane Smith was unhappy as well. Knowing how his season has gone to this point, I feel that his anger was misguided. Yes, Smith missed out on winning, but he hadn’t finished better than 13th all year and a 16th-place finish at Sonoma Raceway was his best run since Daytona International Speedway.

Overall, NBC did a pretty good job given the ridiculous circ*mstances of Sunday’s race. The constant wrecking late likely tested everyone’s patience, but the final product was good. I wasn’t a fan of NBC trying to create a rivalry between Hamlin and Larson. Sure, they’ve raced each other hard over the past couple of years, but I’ve never really heard anything that indicates that either Hamlin or Larson have it out for each other.

That’s all for this week. Next weekend, NASCAR returns to Chicago for a second go-around in Grant Park. You’ll also have the return of Radio-style broadcasting. MRN Radio’s Mike Bagley will be back on the broadcast at the intersection of turns 1 and 6, where there likely will be a lot of action for him to call. Hopefully, it stays dry this time.

Meanwhile, the NTT IndyCar Series will be at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Formula 1 makes its yearly trip to Silverstone, while ARCA Menards Series West has a doubleheader at Irwindale Speedway. TV listings can be found here.

We’ll have critiques of the Cup and NASCAR Xfinity Series races from Grant Park in next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch. In The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter, we’ll have a critique of Friday night’s Rackley Roofing 200 for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

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