In-Progress At Richmond: Sprint Cup Series On Fox

Update: Here we go again! The Major League Baseball game on Fox is now overlapping the pre-race show. The green flag is at 7:45PM Eastern Time. The East Coast and West Coast (portions) are seeing the Mets vs. Diamondbacks game. Other areas in the Central time zone are seeing the NASCAR pre-race. This is called regional broadcasting and Fox is finishing the Mets game on the stations that started it.

The Sprint Cup Series is under the lights at the Richmond International Raceway for what should be an interesting night of TV coverage.

Chris Myers will start the evening off for Fox from the Hollywood Hotel with a forty-five minute pre-race show at 7PM Eastern Time. Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Hammond will be alongside.

Mike Joy will anchor the race coverage, with Waltrip and Larry McReynolds in the booth. Down on pit road will be Dick Berggren, Matt Yocum, Steve Byrnes and Krista Voda.

The dynamics of this short "bull ring" are very different than Talladega, and proved to be trouble for the ESPN crew on Friday night. It was tough to keep-up with all the action on the track, and several replays of accidents were not available.

This is a "tension" race. The first couple runs are about feeling out the track, the car and the tire wear. Then, the jockeying for position begins and the end result is often hot tempers and bent cars. It should be interesting to watch the NASCAR on Fox crew make this transition after the Talladega race of team tactics and drafting.

Fox has calmed down on the "Digger" cam and instead emphasized the in-car cameras at Talladega throughout the event. It should be interesting to see what TV approach they take in Richmond, where laps of under 22 seconds should make it tough to use the "TV toys" available unless the race is under caution.

Update: I have been reminded that a live baseball game on Fox started at 3:30PM. With the pre-race show starting at 7PM, this allows the normal amount of time for the game. Should things go into extra innings or rain delay the game, Fox will once again find itself shifting baseball to FX or collapsing the NASCAR pre-race show.

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