TNT rolls into Michigan for what many expect to be a fuel mileage shootout among the Ford teams. Ford dominated the Nationwide Series race on Saturday and has quickly become the engine story of this season.
Lindsay Czarniak will be hosting the Countdown to Green pre-race show. She will be joined by Kyle Petty and Larry McReynolds. This week's Pride of NASCAR will feature AJ Foyt. Driver Carl Edwards will join the TNT on the Infield Rig during the show.
Adam Alexander will call the race with Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach Jr. alongside. On pit road will be Chris Neville, Matt Yocum, Ralph Sheheen and Marty Snider.
Once again this week Turner Sports will offer the expanded RaceBuddy application. Having this for MIS is the same kind of positive element that Pocono enjoyed last week. Despite perhaps the race appearing to be boring at times on TV, once fans were allowed to make their own online choices about what to watch things stayed interesting.
This year RaceBuddy has also put the actual TNT call of the race on both mosaic channels. This allows fans who do not have access to the TV to finally be able to see and hear the races. If TNT added a single channel of the actual TNT feed, then NASCAR would have finally become a portable online sports product.
The downside of TNT is that the network is dominated by entertainment programming. The pressure for live sports to get off the air and make way for promotion of new shows was evident last weekend. Despite an early finish, TNT did only a basic set of post-race interviews and then departed.
The TNT PR folks said that additional interviews would be done on RaceBuddy, but that simply did not happen. The only thing provided was the usual post-race press conference coverage from the Infield Media Center.
NASCAR is a sport most closely associated with golf. Once the action is done, there are plenty of stories to tell and every athlete involved in the competition that day has fans looking for information. Now well into the heart of the season, TNT would be better served to use the pit reporters and fill the allotted time.
As usual, there is a lot of media pressure on Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win today. While his team is running well, the buzz is that the Fords have an advantage at MIS. It should be interesting to see how TNT treats the most popular driver on today's telecast.
As of 10AM, it was raining on the IndyCars in Milwaukee and the NHRA folks in Bristol, TN. No such problems at MIS, where the weather is expected to be good and the race should run as scheduled. The Saturday crowd was light, so keep an eye on the grandstands today.
This post will serve to host your comments on the TNT coverage of the Sprint Cup Series from MIS. To add your TV-related comment, just click on the comments button below. You can also follow us at twitter.com/thedalyplanet for live NASCAR chat during the race. Thanks for taking the time to stop by.