The good news is that the weather has cleared and it is going to be a beautiful day in the Las Vegas area. The bad news is that the rematch of USA vs. Canada in Olympic hockey is on NBC up against the NASCAR race.
The NASCAR on FOX team has been having a hit or miss season. They missed in Daytona but rebounded in California. This week, Darrell Waltrip has been on SPEED many times covering practice, qualifying and as a panelist on the Trackside show. His behavior had been nothing short of erratic.
On Trackside, Jeff Hammond actually changed chairs to sit next to Waltrip and could be seen trying to quiet him down while fellow panelists tried to ask questions of guest Danica Patrick. When Juan Montoya arrived as the next guest, Walrip again talked constantly.
Mike Joy is a well known commodity in the NASCAR world. He can deliver stirring play-by-play and knows how to tell the stories unfolding on the track. Joy's booth partner Larry McReynolds provides information on race strategy and crew chief issues. It is left up to Waltrip to deal with the driver topics and call the replays.
Waltrip will begin the day in the Hollywood Hotel with Hammond and host Chris Myers. This week, the Slice of Pizzi feature continues with driver interviews conducted in an embarrassing fashion for the sake of comedy. The pre-race show has been struggling and the race today really needs a strong lead-in.
The FOX Director is a veteran, but the struggle between showing the field and using in-car cameras has been rough. Normally, TV waits until the field gets strung-out to use the in-cars in order not to miss any incidents or key passes. FOX has been going early to the in-cars and has been forced to replay a lot of action for the TV viewers.
Joy has been handling a big commercial and promo load of show elements that he reads from the booth. That has taken away from his commentary duties. It should be interesting to see if the FOX movie promos and the in-race videos continue. While the Digger presence is less, the commercial elements inserted into the races have been distracting this season.
The pit road reporters Steve Byrnes, Krista Voda, Matt Yocum and Dick Berggren are going to be key today. Action at Vegas happens quickly and often involves more than one car. Information needs to be passed along and interviews conducted with drivers out of the race. There may be more than a few.
In a Sunday morning update, The NASCAR Insiders passed along from the track that NASCAR was putting pressure on the "start and park" cars to stay on the track and even do pit stops. You may remember that Dave Blaney's S&P car was taken last week after the race with NASCAR claiming it was a "routine inspection." See if FOX addresses this topic during the pre-race or the live race telecast.
The pre-race show begins at 2PM and the green flag flies at 3:16PM. The telecast is scheduled to run until 6:30PM ET. This post will serve to host your comments during the NASCAR on FOX broadcast of the Sprint Cup Series event from Las Vegas.
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