Well, right to the race this time with no nonsense, since there was a threat of rain. There was a better crowd than I expected, given that it was technically the day after the race and there was a good chance of more rain. Not to mention, the crowd was badly jerked around yesterday. These fans are hardcore.
There was finally a mention of the Start and Park teams. They made a point of mentioning that all of the cars in the race were sponsored. When Scott Riggs and small team he drives for briefly took the lead, Fox made a point of showing his sponsors. Maybe NASCAR leaned on them to do it or not, but it was a good move anyway.
I didn’t mean to do this when I started watching, but I kept an unofficial count of Junior’s appearances during the race. Over three hours, it was about three mentions per hour of racing. This was roughly three more mentions than any other racer got who was also not in the top 30. There were other drivers that got a lot more coverage, but those guys were contending. Of course, this was nothing compared to the Danica 500 yesterday. But then again, she was in the top ten for most of the race and came in third.
If I really wanted to give myself a headache, I should started counting the commercial breaks while they were racing. Fox certainly seemed convinced that the race wasn’t going much past halfway and was trying to jam in all of their spots. Ironically, while they were in rain delay, the commercials were much less frequent.
I wouldn’t have bothered watching the first hour-long rain delay, but I was enjoying an early lunch at the time. Let me go ahead and sell out here and mention my lunch provider, Papa Johns Pizza. Yesterday, I got a large specialty Meat Lovers pizza for $10.99. Just a steal for the sheer volume of excellent toppings and the always-satisfying crust, sauce, and cheese topping. Mmmm. Mmmm. It was just as good warmed up today. (Call me, John. I have reasonable rates for sponsorship. Hell, I’ll work for free pizza.)
Over the course of the six and a half-hour broadcast, I think they got around to speaking to all the drivers. During that first delay, I became more convinced that Jimmie Johnson must shave. Really. He’s got some kind of Hitler-like mustache growing under his nose. Jimmie, don’t give your haters more fodder.
I liked their report card roundtable segment, where they graded the main teams. They were trying to make the best of a bad situation, and it was a good spirited debate. The best part was DW using the telestrator to draw dunce caps on the Hollywood Hotel guys. On the other hand, maybe they should just show commercials for the entire time and go commercial-free when the race restarts.
Just an observation. The tracks obviously can’t control the weather, but there’s always certain spots that do not dry quickly. NASCAR should mandate that those areas be identified and fixed if possible. As Chris Myers suggested, maybe a large investment in some Sham Wows.
I’d talk about the race, but wasn’t much of it and there wasn’t much action to talk about. It was hard not to notice at times that the announcers were watching a better race than what was on TV. Many on-track incidents would be mentioned, but not shown. The only good caution was the classy move to stop the race and have the Memorial Day moment of silence. This was somewhat ruined by Mike Joy’s speech chastising America for its reckless consumerism and debt. “This moment of silence brought to you by Budweiser. Memorialize this great country with the great American lager.” Okay, that’s not what he said, but it could have happened. I’d be surprised if Mike Helton didn’t pay Joy a little visit to remind him that every moment of a NASCAR broadcast displays an ad somewhere, and that they want people to buy recklessly.
I only caught bits and pieces of the other rain delays. There was Montoya and his crew chief laughing and chatting with Joey Logano. I wonder what that was about. Myers made sure to mention that Logano’s 19th birthday party would be at Chuck E. Cheese’s directly following the race. There was another interview with Jeff Gordon and looked a lot more chippy than yesterday. Driving fast is apparently good therapy for a bad back. Plenty of nice shots of Ingrid, too.
This race was decided on a gusty pit call and some meteorology. David Reutimann said he hoped to earn a win after this one. Dude, you totally earned this one on the basis of that two and half hours of agonizing (for everyone) rain delay, when it was pretty clear there wasn’t going to be any more racing. He’ll have that brand new Coca-Cola 600 trophy to keep him warm while he’s in the hospital with pneumonia from standing out in the rain the whole time. (Can’t disagree with his superstition, it worked.) Aaron’s must be happy. There’s no telling how much airtime they got.
I’m not sure what I envisioned doing today, but I certainly made a mistake in watching this. I’m almost frightened to imagine how much rain delay coverage I watched over the last two days. Mike Joy called this year’s rain-shortened Daytona 500 the biggest disappointment of the year. The rain ended what he said was shaping up to be a good race. No problem with that this time. The drivers seemed to be phoning it in, as there was only one car out, and that for mechanical reasons.
If Fox was responsible for dragging people along yesterday, NASCAR more than returned the favor to them. The announcers were clearly lobbying to end the race after the shower when the race got halfway (which was four hours in itself). By the end, they stopped even trying to be entertaining were reduced to the booth guys simply vamping for time.
So this is what we have. The broadcast networks want to put programming on at its scheduled time (and not run over into something important like “America’s Funniest Home Videos”) for sponsors and ratings. And then there’s regulatory body making every effort to finish the entire race and not disappoint the fans (and avoid taking screaming criticism for doing something like cutting off the Daytona 500 too early). What we ended up with was two wasted days to get in half a race.
NASCAR is holding a town hall meeting this week. I hope one topic they bring up is how to get these competing agendas reconciled.
J.
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