From Kentucky: NCTS Race (6PM) On SPEED

The evening of NASCAR racing begins with the NCTS qualifying from Kentucky Speedway. It continues with The Set-Up pre-race show and then the race itself.

Qualifying comes along at 3:30PM, right after the mid-season recap show. Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip call the single truck action on a track that has proven to be a handful since the teams arrived. Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander will cover pit road and the garage area.

After a short break, things continue with Krista Voda hosting The Set-Up at 6PM. She will have Randy Moss alongside talking about his new involvement in the series. Parsons and Waltrip will talk about the season-to-date and there will be a fun feature about some announcers trying their hand at driving "race" cars.

This will be a one hour special edition that leads directly into the race coverage at 7PM. This track is great for the trucks and an enthusiastic crowd often makes this one of the best NCTS races of the season. It certainly does leave one to wonder what the Cup cars could do on this oval.

The entire gang returns for the race coverage and this time Voda gets to continue on-the-air as she will join the telecast as a third pit reporter. If SPEED could continue to add this additional reporter as the series heads down-the-stretch it certainly would help the overall telecast.

For the past several seasons, the NCTS on SPEED has been the most consistent NASCAR TV product on-the-air. It is not sliced-up among three networks like the Cup Series, and does not suffer from the program conflicts that have mangled the final three months of Nationwide Series coverage on ESPN2.

SPEED has time to devote to this coverage and has provided an "old school" NASCAR telecast that lets the action on the track tell the story. No one on these telecasts, including Waltrip, speaks as if they are superior to the drivers, owners or crew chiefs. Parsons does a very good job of keeping everything in perspective.

While the mid-season recap show is a good step, SPEED would perhaps be wise in considering the addition of a weekly show to update the stories of the series and profile the many new faces who begin their NASCAR careers in a Craftsman Truck.

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