The final race of the NASCAR season causes a couple of feelings for me. One, I get a little wistful since there won’t be any more NASCAR for the rest of the year. Two, I get annoyed with the championship focus. Today, there’s more than enough racing to keep me occupied through the winter months. Still bites, though.
What I really don’t like about the Championship 4 setup here is that seemingly nothing else matters other than the championship. There are multiple reasons why this is detrimental to the overall broadcast.
Let’s start with the end of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, Nov. 2. NASCAR uploaded the final couple of laps to social media later on Sunday night.
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I can think of an obvious thing that I don’t like here. This was actually a very exciting race to the finish that featured Ryan Blaney making a last-turn pass on Brad Keselowski for the victory. However, if you weren’t paying attention, you’d think that nothing happened at the front since it was completely ignored in favor of Kyle Larson. Blaney’s interview was moved to Peacock.
This is ridiculous. When I watched this on Sunday, I thought, “What the heck, man?” Yes, Larson was ahead of Denny Hamlin and in position to win the title. You can’t just ignore the race for the win because of that. It was probably one of the better races for a victory at Phoenix for the Cup Series.
At the bare minimum, this garbage should never happen again.
Second, we knew from the first lap of practice on Friday that tires were going to be a problem. You saw a number of teams have issues with the tires during the race. Remember that all four Championship 4 drivers had at least one cut tire during the race.
However, the NBC broadcast never really got to the bottom of what caused these issues. On Friday, the discussion seemed to be based around the idea of low tire pressures and cutting the dogleg hurt something with the tires internally since most of the failures were left rear tires.
Sunday saw right rear failures and a number of right front failures. I knew going in that these tires were supposed to wear more than those used back in March, but I had no idea how much. What I wanted to see for the entire race on Sunday is what tire wear actually looked like. Sure, we saw blown tires being removed from the cars, but sitting here a day after the race, I don’t know what a good tire after a long run looked like.
Were drivers showing cords on their tires like we saw at Bristol Motor Speedway back in September? I don’t know. It’s supposed to be one of the benefits of a good race broadcast to bring viewers coverage like that and we just didn’t get it.
The sheer number of failures Sunday made me want to hear from someone with Goodyear, like we saw back at Bristol. Would we have gotten something along the lines of “the tires are working as designed?” I don’t know. But I would have liked to get more of an explanation for the failures. I don’t think they were all due to setup issues.
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A third issue I had is not unique to NBC’s Cup broadcast, but was an issue on the NASCAR Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series broadcasts as well. Normally, there is a camera on top of the control tower that only follows the leader all day. This is referred to as “Camera No. 1.”
In past years, there have been isolated cameras on every one of the Championship 4 drivers in the final race of the season. Unfortunately, that can come at a detriment to some of the other cameras at the track.
It was worse during the support races than on Sunday, but we missed a bunch of stuff, or didn’t have good views of things, because of the extra cameras on the Championship 4. That’s unfortunate.
The Countdown to Green was an hour long, which was nice to see. Here, it was all about the Championship 4. Once again, I would have preferred more coverage of the tire issues, but it didn’t really come into play here.
Each of the Championship 4 drivers had special things about them on the show. For instance, Jimmie Johnson talked about how William Byron has changed in the 20 years that he’s known him. Apparently, Byron grew up in Johnson’s neighborhood and would trick-or-treat at his house.
Steve Letarte also sat down with the Championship 4 crew chiefs to talk race strategy. Obviously, everyone was keeping their plans close to the vest, but there were signs given about how aggressive they might be. Sure enough, it came into play on Sunday.
As compared to last year, Sunday’s race was actually more competitive. It was at least partially to do with the fact that there were five more cautions than last year, but there were also no green-flag pit stop sequences.
NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that there was an average of 10.9 passes per lap under green Sunday. That is an increase of 1.2 per lap over last year.
However, the way Sunday’s race was broadcast made it a little difficult to see how competitive the race was away from the restarts. The Championship 4 focus was just too high.
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Post-race coverage was rather annoying. Yes, the broadcast wanted to give the majority of attention to Larson since he won the title. I would have preferred to hear from the winner of the race before the 30-minute mark of post-race coverage. Blaney was the only non-Championship 4 driver that we heard from after the race.
Keselowski didn’t even get an interview on the broadcast. I’m unclear on whether NBC talked to him at all after the race. For the sake of this conversation, Frontstretch talked to Keselowski after the race.
Let’s face facts. I’d much rather hear from other drivers than watch Katelyn Larson shotgun a beer. I’m sure that some of you like that.
Overall, the whole weekend was just frustrating to watch at times. The tire story was far bigger than NBC made it out to be. Byron’s crash on lap 309 after cutting a tire swung the whole championship. Had it not happened, Denny Hamlin would have won it.
The championship focus was so encompassing that NBC seemingly couldn’t do its job properly. Hopefully, whatever NASCAR decides for next season will alleviate this ridiculousness and free the broadcasters to just do their jobs. The focus just drove me nuts. If anything, it was more annoying than last year.
That’s all for this week. Just because the NASCAR season is over doesn’t mean that the racing ends. This weekend, the FIA World Endurance Championship wraps up its 2025 season in Bahrain. There’s also the World of Outlaws World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte. Hopefully, its track issues have been rectified. TV listings can be found here.
For next week, we’re going to do a year-in-review for NBC Sports’ coverage of NASCAR here at Frontstretch. The Critic’s Annex in the Frontstretch Newsletter will cover the Truck finale from Friday night.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He’s the manager of the site’s FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site’s Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.