Thursday, May 1, 2008

In-Progress At Richmond: Cup Practice And Qualifying For Both Series


SPEED is going to wrap the NASCAR programming into a nice little "block" on Friday afternoon before the real fun begins with the Nationwide Series race.

Here is the line-up of shows and hosts that we will be discussing:

NASCAR Live at 1PM Eastern Time will be hosted by John Roberts and will feature Bob Dillner reporting from the garage area. This should be an interesting program as Roberts will have to explain how things are going to work later in the evening.

Sprint Cup Final practice at 1:30PM will bring the NASCAR on Fox gang back. Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds will be upstairs in the announce booth. Down on pit road will be Dick Berggren, Krista Voda and Matt Yocum. The Hollywood Hotel will be open for this program and will contain Steve Byrnes and Jeff Hammond. Practice actually will take place live at 11AM, so this ninety minutes of content will be "time-shifted" and made to fit the on-air TV format.

Go or Go Home at 3:30PM will feature a return of John Roberts and Bob Dillner.

Nationwide Qualifying at 4PM will have Steve Byrnes hosting with Jeff Hammond alongside. Down on pit road will be Krista Voda and Matt Yocum.

Sprint Cup Qualifying at 5:30PM will bring back Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds. Down on pit road will be Matt Yocum and Dick Berggren.

NASCAR Live at 7PM will be a new show created to serve as the SPEED pre-race show for the Nationwide Series race. John Roberts will host with Randy Pemberton and Bob Dillner reporting.

This post will serve to host all the TV-related comments during the long day of NASCAR TV programming before the big race.

There will be a new post up for the Nationwide Series race at 6:30PM, one hour before the event. To learn more about this race and the TV chaos that it caused, scroll down to the read all about it.

Please note that Trackside on SPEED will follow the live race, and both Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch will join Steve Byrnes, Larry McReynolds, Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Hammond at the SPEED Stage.

Please give us your feedback on these SPEED programs. To add your comment, just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the easy instructions. The rules for posting are on the right side of the main page. The verification sign-in is back due to some automated spam programs that attacked the site. It will be lifted for the race and the forum will be moderated. Thanks.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good Morning JD,
What I would like to see on SPEED, NASCAR Live at 1PM is somewhat of an explaination as to what is going on in some detail. And John Roberts has to do that, as it pertains to the schedule today. Yes, you have explained well in blogs in last 18 hours, as have the posts. And they were good. Just want to hear it from SPEED so those who are just tuning in can understand what we now know.

Lou
Kingston,NY

Anonymous said...

I am on of the fortune ones that get both SPEED and ESPN Classic, but I will watch the race on Speed, just to show my support for what they are doing. I hope that a lot of other people that get both will do the same. It will show Speed our support and ESPN our disapproval of their disregard of NASCAR.
Penny

Anonymous said...

I don't believe NASCAR is being disregarded. It is a playoff game after all! I think ESPN did the best they could under the circumstances. Other sports do exist, whether we like it or not. I can remember when Grand National races were never on TV.

stricklinfan82 said...

Very enjoyable practice show. Simple broadcast with no gimmick cameras, no TV network merchandise hype, no nameless Fox guy stuffing his face on TV for no good reason, etc. Just video of race cars and audio from the very best on-air personalities you could possibly ask for.

Go or Go Home was absolutely spectacular from where I sat. 30 minutes of nothing but interviews with go-or-go-homers. Exactly what many fans have been asking for since this show's inception, and Speed has finally delivered.

Great day so far. Add in the TiVo style format so we actually see all the go-or-go-homers qualify in their entirety and Speed will have had a perfect day from where I sit.

And boy it's sad to see how bad the state of the Nationwide Series has gotten. Yet another full-time team (Ganassi's #41) didn't show up this week because of sponsorship woes. Since the top 30 locked-in rule in Nationwide only applies to full-time teams, we've now gotten to a point where a start-and-park team - the #52 team of Derrike Cope - has a guaranteed starting spot, which is very sad from my point of view.

kang said...

One thing wrong with the go or go home show.The chart they use for the go or go homers, and those 35th to say 30th.John Roberts seems to misunderstand this chart every time they put it up.Today he said the 55 was 49 points to the good.He is 110.Speed should teach Roberts how to read the thing ,or redo it the right way.I.E. put the blank space between 35th and 36th.Instead Speed makes the 35th place blank and uses + for those above and - for those below.

Anonymous said...

I would say the Jimmy Means owned #52 is a little more than a start and park having completed 31.69 % of the laps in the races they have been involved in! Not great but something with their budget.

Newracefan said...

IS anyone having problems with Nascar.com. I can't get it to load? This does not look good for those they were going to use it to watch the NW Race

Anonymous said...

newracefan, well don't try to load the stream now! the stream has not started yet. it will usually start about 15 min before the green flag.

Anonymous said...

newracefan, If you were referring to the home page and Not the live stream it self, I can get to NASCAR.com with no problems. but again the stream will not start until a little bit before green.

stricklinfan82 said...

I'm definitely disappointed that we missed the entire qualifying runs of two go-or-go-homers. It was nice of Mike Joy to try to explain the drama we missed of Sterling needing to pick up on lap 2 and nipping Kyle Petty by one-thousandth of a second, but it's still not the same as seeing it happen on TV.

I certainly understand that they couldn't use 100% TiVo style to show every car because they were up against a 7:00 deadline, that's fine. What I'm expressing is that I would like to see Speed make a more concerted effort to use their selective TiVo style and commercial spacing to allow us to see all the go-or-go-homers qualify in their entirety. They are the most important cars in the session and create the most exciting television of the entire session (and they have their own 30 min. show on Speed dedicated to them), so to me I just don't understand why any of them are ever skipped.

If true-live coverage is needed, front load the commercials to when the top 35 cars are on the track. If they determine they can use limited TiVo style that would require them to skip 1 or 3 or 6 or 8 or X number of cars' entire runs to end the broadcast by a certain time, then please be more selective and never choose a go-or-go-homer in that group of "must skip" cars (unless it's a weekend with only one past champion's provisional eligible driver, since that guy will be irrelevant to the go-or-go-home drama and would be okay to skip if he's not a pole threat).