Saturday, June 6, 2009

Saturday: Practice, Qualifying And An ARCA Race


Daytime TV on Saturday features three on-track sessions and one race. SPEED begins at 10AM with the Sprint Cup practice from Pocono. Rain washed everything out on Friday, so teams will want to get as much track time as possible.

The second Cup Series practice is called Happy Hour and that will bring the NASCAR on TNT gang to TV for the first time this season. The session will be shown on SPEED at 11:30AM with Bill Weber, Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach in the booth.

At 3PM, Jerry Punch will lead the ESPN team on the air with Nationwide qualifying coverage from Nashville, TN. Dale Jarrett has the weekend off, so Rusty Wallace will be joining Punch and Andy Petree to call the session.

SPEED's Rick Allen and Phil Parsons are flying from Texas to Pocono to call the ARCA Series race at 4PM ET. Joey Logano is the only Cup Series driver crossing-over to battle the veterans like Bobby Gerhart and Frank Kimmel. Several drivers like Patrick Sheltra and points leader Justin Lofton also should be fun to watch. The ARCA Series always has some interesting characters, and senior citizen James Hylton is in the race at 74 years young.

TDP will be live blogging the Nationwide Series race on ESPN2 beginning at 7PM ET tonight. This post will serve to host your comments about the daytime racing TV. To add your opinion on these telecasts, just click the comments button below.

This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thank you for taking time out of your weekend to stop by The Daly Planet.

135 comments:

Labbie said...

Nothing against the SPEED guys, but I'm missing Mike Joy already.

Nice interview with JPM; too bad for Tony going to a backup car.

Dot said...

Will we miss pat of qual due to the college baseball game?

I've asked this before. Does JP ever get a weekend off? JP & Rusty in the booth, oh boy.

Hey, Wally, Kyle & Bill in the SPEED booth.

Anonymous said...

I miss Mike Joy also. Now TNT is on - nice that Bill,Wally & Kyle aren't dressed up like triplets lol. And reporters aren't in fire suits.

Anonymous said...

@Dot - we aren't that lucky to get a weekend respite from Jerry calling a race. We fans must have done something real bad to get Rusty & Jerry together. Where do I make a burnt offering to make it better?

Mike said...

They'll show Nashville qualifying in it's entirety.....it's just going to be tape-delayed by 30 minutes. I'm not sure why the Nashville track can't wait 30 minutes to start qualifying so it can be shown live. It's not like there's other series racing at the track today.

Dot said...

@ Mike, you are correct. The guide is showing (D).

There's an NHRA show on before golf starts. That's our next worry. Possible channel roulette for the race?

Daly Planet Editor said...

Nice to know Kyle is reading Twitter in the booth live and taking pics while he is on the air.

The Loose Wheel said...

Interesting, very interesting so far.

I wonder if we had Mike Joy with Kyle and Wally how that would play out...

Sorry, its Pocono...lot of time to think about these things.

As for Nashville, since its a quick turnaround from qualifying trim to race trim I imagine they wont budge just in case theres a wreck or blown engine or two in qual.

SPEED winds up with a taped qualifying session on the air...shouldnt matter that ESPN would tape delay either.

The Loose Wheel said...

Wally with some backhanded sarcasm on Robby Gordon...

Sophia said...

I've been watching HH off and on and am enjoying the energy in the booth and the talk between Kyle & Wally. :)

Dot said...

@ David, if you pay attention, Wally seems to do that. Not just with Robby, but other drivers too.

Lisa Hogan said...

@Dot--I always called Wally's attitude "sour grapes". :)

Anonymous said...

I misread the schedule, I thought DJ was there this weekend. Jason tweeted that he was there. I liked when they let Uncle Glenn play pit reporter in the past. I like him too :)

Yes when do JP and Mr. Petree get vay cay time? It's a long way to November :(

Smoke will win from the back :)

Dot said...

@ Gymmie our resident historian, doesn't Jason spot for someone?

@ Lisa H, maybe his mood depends on whose underwear he's wearing.

The Loose Wheel said...

Dot...yeah i know.

I think its mostly guys Wally has raced against and some of it is either inside humor or extreme dislike lol

Anonymous said...

@Dot--LOL! He just might. Yes I should know these things *giggle*

Dot said...

This is way off OT. I'm watching the Rolex race. Just when two drivers were splitting a slower car, they went to the in-car shot missing the drama. See? we're not the only ones this happens to.

Who in the truck thinks this is good coverage?

Mike said...

At the rate the college baseball game I'm watching is going, it'll probably end right around 3:15p.m. It'll be interesting to see what ESPN2 does....do they start rolling the tape-delayed coverage at 3p.m. and join it in progress after the baseball game? or do they wait until after the baseball game to start to start rolling the tape-delayed coverage?

stricklinfan82 said...

On Saturday's Coverage:

I very much preferred the coverage style the production truck used during the first of two Cup practice sessions. There is plenty of downtime during a race weekend to give cutaway car demonstrations. When the cars are on the track practicing I would prefer the coverage to remain exclusively on them. Hopefully the incident of completely missing Brian Vickers spinning while Larry Mac was doing a demonstration served as a lesson and we won't have to see that happen again.

On Sunday's Coverage

I think most fans understand the basics of the new NASCAR rules, but I really hope TNT will take some extended time during their 90+ minute pre-race show on Sunday to go over some of the deeper questions that to the best of my knowledge remain unanswered about them, including but not limited to.....

- Will the lapped cars restart based on their running order as well? (i.e. will all the 1 lap down cars restart in front of the 2 lap down cars?, will the 2 lap down cars restart in front of the 3 lap down cars?, etc.)

- When you get a pit road penalty under yellow do you have to restart at the back of the entire field or just the back of the cars in your lap?

- Will the Lucky Dog restart at the back of the entire field or just the back of the cars on his lap? What about the wave-around cars?

- Will the wave-around cars be forbidden from pitting between the time they're waved around the pace car with one-to-go and the time the race restarts, or can they pit in the event that the restart is waved off?

- Doesn't NASCAR realize that teams are going to use the wave-around rule to steal laps on normal situations too, not just on the "yellow flag falls during green flag stops" scenario? What would stop every single lapped car in the field from staying out on the track every time the leaders pit under yellow and stealing a lap?

To me this wave around rule opens up a gigantic can of worms and will cheapen the competition by giving out 5, 10, 20, or sometimes more "free passes" every time the leaders pit under yellow. Even if NASCAR doesn't allow the wave-around cars to pit between the time they're waved around the pace car and the time the green falls again, wouldn't every lapped car take the gamble of getting out-of-sync and hoping for another quick yellow to get back on schedule if it meant getting to steal a lap? Heck, at Pocono those wave-around cars could even dive into the pits and get their service on the first lap of green after the restart and still not lose back that lap they stole with the wave-around rule.


Good luck to everyone on the TNT team. I hope you blow Fox completely out of the water with a great pre-race show and even better race coverage. I'm looking forward to a much needed breath of fresh air with race coverage that's motivated by doing what's in the best interest of the fans at home and not motivated by feeding spiteful behind-the-scenes and upper management "I know better than the NASCAR fans what's good for them" ego.

The Loose Wheel said...

Stricklin, I agree with you about the new double file restarts, I asked Greg Biffle about it during the ESPN.com chat the other day too. There will be alot of growing pains I imagine. I really had no issues with how restarts were done before.

I look at this as a gimmick. Its manufactured passing, the guy who still gets out front first will run away and THAT is what needs to get addressed. But thats just me.

Hopefully we get some answers during the race asto how it will work out with all the scenarios you suggested. But I think to be a wave around, you'll have to stay out and wont be able to pit during that caution period.

Mike said...

I'm surprised ESPN2 isn't running a "Program Alert" crawl in regards to their qualifying coverage.

Mike said...

Nevermind! They're running it now!

Dot said...

@ Strick, good post.

I think the double file restart rules are going to be confusing to everyone. Maybe they should just limit it to the last part of the race.

Bottom of the 8th in baseball. Qual will be joined in progress is my guess.

Anonymous said...

ESPN is on a role this weekend! They turned practice into a disaster, didn't show happy hour, and now qualifying isn't on because college baseball went long.

bryanh said...

About half the cars have qualified, Nascar.com has live leaderboard running.

Glenn said...

Dot, I'm watching the Rolex also. Funny how different our opinions can be. I thought it was exciting to get to see what the driver sees when 2 bigger faster cars wedge me in. I understand your side too, I just got a chuckle when I read your comment. :)
Guess this is what makes the world go round.

Anonymous said...

"Nationwide qualifying coming up next" - wonder when "next" is since they're only in the 8th inning, one out.... I don't have the patience for this today - ESPN was lousy last season and we're obviously in for more of the same.

Once again, NASCAR will come in last on ESPN's list of priorities..

Mike said...

Here's another scenario....it's not like they're going to use the last caution lap to line up the cars....yet many times some lead lap teams will elect to "top off" on fuel.....#1, where do those teams line up, does he line up at the end of the lead lap cars?, or does he line up at the back of the field behind all the lap down cars?....and #2, how does that team get it's spot filled that it vacated? For instance, say the car running 15th (inside row 7) decides to top off...does the car inside row 8 just move up a row, and in essence passes up the car on the outside of row 7 in the running order?

Daly Planet Editor said...

The TV window for NASCAR is 5PM when live golf is on the air.

90 minutes of qualifying is going to be collapsing once/if we pass 3:30PM.

Lisa Hogan said...

I'm going to watch the ARCA race when it comes on SPEED and forget about ESPN. They don't show much of the cars during qualifying anyway. :)

Mike said...

Gotta figure there's at least 5 minutes left in this half-inning and then about another 10 minutes to do the top half of the 9th....probably looking at 3:35 to 3:40 for this game to get done, barring, extra innings. Thankfully, the "road" team is getting beat, so that would save having to play the entire 9th inning.

Anonymous said...

@ Stricklin & Mike - thank you - I too have many questions about the double file restart.
I hope TNT does follow your suggestion & give us info.
It seems to be a "quick fix" without addressing the real problems the car has.

espn is the NW series network all year & it gets this lousy coverage, the Cup series is toast. Guess I'll renew PitCommand after all.

Dot said...

@ Glenn, the least they could've done was show both both in-car and out car shots. I chuckled right back at you :).

BSPNCL has rugby on. I guess they couldn't preempt that for baseball or NW qual.

@ Lisa H, I'm doing the same thing. JD's rules prevent me from really typing what I want to say.

@ Mike, I'm betting on a tie and extra innings.

Daly Planet Editor said...

No ARCA spoilers in the comments please. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

No ARCA spoiler here - how far can I go with comments about ESPN though? And you know they won't be nice! Am following the qualifying on NASCAR.com...

Mike said...

That's NASCAR's luck....lol.....1 strike away from the game being over, and the batter gets a double to put runners on 2nd and 3rd....a hit would tie the game.

Daly Planet Editor said...

We welcome comments on TV coverage of all types. No hateful speech or derogatory language.

ESPN did ruin practice, let's see what qualifying brings.

I am still all bent out of shape about the trucks. Who knew what and when did they know it is the key.

Dot said...

What happened to O'Quinn? He was listed as the first one to qual and he's last on the list. Only 2 Cup drivers, SDDD & Carl E.

And it's tied.

Sophia said...

ARCA spoilers..wow, I wonder if I need to stay off of Twitter..just got on laptop.

Stricklanfan

good post, I had much confusion and questions about the starting at end of lap and other things, too.

TNT

Also BAD IDEA Larry in cutaway during practice. Please let us see the 'cars on the track.' Simple.

I am like Lisa or somebody and will choose ARCA on SPEED over ESPN.

Hope the camera work and guys in the booth are better. Is Schrader in the race or in the booth?

If TNT can get the camera directing great again, we will enjoy the race. But I was uneasy seeing Larry Mac so much DURING HH.

Anonymous said...

Great stuff from ESPN boys today. They seem like they are having today, maybe someone fed them some redbull....LOL

Mike said...

My guess is some S&Ps qualifying runs will get cut out in Nationwide qualifying coverage. I'm sure the editing machine is at work as we speak in Nashville.

Daly Planet Editor said...

ARCA results were reported on Twitter when the race was over.

N'wide qual results are being posted now.

Sophia said...

Bob Pockrass already ruined the ARCAR race. I just saw your post JD.

He Tweeted SPOILER ALERT and then IMMEDIATELY gave the FULL NAME of the winner. Duh. Tweet's ain't that long you know? Hard to turn off reading that quickly.

MOST DISAPPOINTING.
These guys need to LEARN TWITTER ETIQUETTE. I need to put a promo for a band gig and saw his spoiler.

He could've at least just given INITIALS.

What a maroon. :(

More important to be FIRST. He could've at LEAST given a "read this link" to see who won the ARCA race post.
NOT that difficult to do.

Savvy news folks do this. Also folks DVRing, taping

Dot said...

Not sure what's going on w/qual. N.com is still showing Atwood as current qualifier. Is he walking the track? He's the 33rd driver to go out.

JD, if you're here, can you turn off the word?

Anonymous said...

Atwood broke an oil line and spilled oil all over the track. The safety crew has been cleaning up.

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to figure out if nascar.com has stopped updating Nationwide Quals to hold results for TV or if there's been a problem at the track. The website hasn't updated in about ten minutes. Wonder why ESPN can't move qualifying to Classic, at least?

Daly Planet Editor said...

OK Dot, but behave yourself!

Daly Planet Editor said...

They missed the chance to start it on Classic. That would have been the way to go.

And this is a stand-alone race as well, that should have made a difference.

Martin Vincent said...

@Dot - I would think something happened to Kelly Bires in the #91 MSRP Motorsports car, Atwood ran his 2 laps and the updates to Live Leaderboard stopped after him. There's no rain in the Nashville area, so it must be something with Bires.

Martin Vincent said...

I stand corrected, Atwood must have spilled the oil at the conclusion of his second lap.

Daly Planet Editor said...

NASCAR says track clean-up still in progress.

Anonymous said...

JD, you didn't really think that ESPN Classic would forego rugby for NASCAR, did you? I mean, rugby is such a big sport in the good old USA!

Oh pshaw....

Anonymous said...

There are 7 S&P entries this weekend: #0, 41, 49, 85, 90, 91, 96

Daly Planet Editor said...

This remind anyone of the Red Sox problem with Fox last season?

The baseball game that will not end.

Richard in N.C. said...

Stricklin & Mike- Thank you. I learned more about how much I didn't understand about the new start rule here than anything I found yesterday from the pros.

Dot said...

Thanks for the answers guys. It would be nice for some dialogue on N.com.

@ JD, I will. At least until the NW race brought to us by BSPN :).

@ Anon 3:56, lol.

Anonymous said...

Wonder if Brian France realizes that ESPN has just thumbed their nose at him one more time...

Will he never get tired of it?!!!

Anonymous said...

I'm seeing college baseball but Tivo says I should be watching qualifying?? Not even local college teams.

Dot said...

Allen Parsons Project Part II.

Dot said...

@ Anon 4:01, the Emperor already got his money, he doesn't care.

Anonymous said...

@Anon 4:01 - all Brian cares about is the $$$. As long as the checks are good he won't care.

Dot said...

@ Jo, great minds.....

Lisa Hogan said...

No problem with me on spoiling, JD.
I'm starting to get a housefull here and will be lucky if I can catch up on the comments later. :)

Enjoy, everyone!

Daly Planet Editor said...

Hey, a Ryan Burr sighting! Former TDP reader and guy with a great haircut!

Anonymous said...

ESPN has gone to a college baseball studio show. (?) Don't you think they would go to Nashville if they were going to cover it? Grrr. And now, when they cut over, we get the long, time-wasting prerecorded intro from Jerry Punch with updates from last year. WTF?

Daly Planet Editor said...

54 total minutes down fron 90 and they still ran the open...oh boy.

Dot said...

How is qual on BSPN going to be shown in it's entirety?

Re: ARCA, two cars heading for pit road.

Anonymous said...

And on top of the open we get the meaningless interview with Leffler and his faux-hawk. Is anybody in Bristol paying any attention?

Anonymous said...

@Dot yes we have great minds & we know TPTB LOL

Anonymous said...

@anon 4:01--only when the checks stop coming in :( I wish they'd do a townhall with the fans, really listen to us and what we want. Sure somethings can't change overnight but others can. We shouldn't have to flip through 8,000 ESPN channels trying to find practice/quals/race when we were told it was going to be on a specific channel. Or be told due to a long race the practice is being played at midnight. So folks stay up/set the DVR/TiVo to record only to find out it's interrupted half way through to show some silly baseball show. Or after a delay have them waste time showing nonsense instead of what we tuned in for.

Mike said...

Be interesting to bring up the qualifying order and keep track of the cars they edit out.

Dot said...

Harr is the last guy out on the track. Qual over any minute now.

@ Mike, go to N.com, the lineup is there.

Anonymous said...

@Mike Looks like they skipped the first five cars.

Mike said...

Wow, they must be setting record speeds! They qualified the first 5 cars during that commercial break!

Daly Planet Editor said...

So they just dropped the first segment of the quals? Lordy...

Dot said...

I'm surprised they're not skipping to 26th qualifier, Carl E. SDDD goes out 28th. Qualifying on TV could be over in 10 minutes.

What happens if girl golf runs late?

Sophia said...

Anonymous Richard in N.C. said...

Stricklin & Mike- Thank you. I learned more about how much I didn't understand about the new start rule here than anything I found yesterday from the pros.

~~~

I meant to say this earlier but you did it better than I!!

JD

THANK you for this blog. I just called out BP for the Arca spoiler, and he apologized and said he got my post about posting a link. Kind of him to respond.

I took back my maroon comment. :)

See it's all about communication.

I LOVE the folks on here.

Thanks for all your work to provide us this place JD.

Anonymous said...

I'm guessing they'll drop five or six drivers per commercial break.

bryanh said...

@Dot, I watched the opening to see what happened to Danny O'Quinn, and they did not show it, or say what happened. I think they stated with the 6th. car in the order. I'm switching to ARCA.

Daly Planet Editor said...

Only the final Sunday round of golf usually runs to conclusion.

This is the third round with all the players who made the cut playing.

Anonymous said...

And Mikey just tweeted a spoiler about the front row at Nashville, _without_ saying "spoiler alert." Maroons indeed.

My bet is that they resume qualifying coverage with Steve Wallace. Any takers?

Anonymous said...

Holy cow! They jumped to 21st in the qual order!

Dot said...

@ bryanh, thanks.

@ Anon 4:24, SW goes out 18th.
There is a surprise outside pole.

pookismac said...

I'm going to get a big bowl of popcorn and a cup of punch and get ready for the race!! Go Danny O'Quinn.

Karen said...

Good for Michael M. He got screwed in Cup.

Anonymous said...

Rusty's Wallace and his family are the only ones in the stands today..... Can no one find the track??

Daly Planet Editor said...

How many cars do you think we are missing?

Anonymous said...

ESPN has their priorities and I have mine.

Since qualifying is over and ESPN is doing a tape delay of it, I'm off to paint my toenails...

Catch you all later at the race!

Anonymous said...

@Dot Thanks! Mikey tipped it off on Twitter.

Now I'm just trying to figure out how they will show another 20 cars in 30 minutes. Ah, the magic of television.

Dot said...

I love that last name Basham for a race car driver.

@ Karen, Michael McD just went there too soon. I'm glad he's doing well now.

Mike said...

They must think the viewer is dumb enough to believe that they haven't edited this out. LOL. I think what they're doing is taking one of the segments between commercial breaks and "deleting" it.

They had to make sure they saved enough time to show Edwards and Busch take their laps.

Brian said...

The first cut was bad. JP said "we'll be back with our first qualifier" then come back from break with him saying "(driver) qualifies 6th of 8 cars so far"

On the 2nd commercial break did they skip 10 cars?

Mike said...

By the way, how long have they been referring to Edwards and Busch as "the boys"? Did they just start that today?

Dot said...

Didn't JP get the script revision?

Anonymous said...

qualifying is so boring, that no one even showed up to the stands.

Daly Planet Editor said...

Chop...chop...chop...

Anonymous said...

The fans are there - like at Fontana, they're just under the stands shopping.... LOL

tinytoes said...

What happened to trigger or diggit or what ever that thing was? Did he get fired because he sucked all the life out of their ratings?

Mike said...

They'll probably take a break after Kyle.....so we'll have to see how far they advance things after that commercial break.

Sophia said...

Which "Mikey" tweeted a spoiler about the front row??

Waltrip? Didn't know he tweeted.

Anonymous said...

@Sophia Yeah, Michael Waltrip. He tweets as @mw55.

Glenn said...

I'll admit to my ignorance today. I didn't see anything telling me that the ARCA race was SDD. I did figure it out, took me a while. Guess I'm a little slow.
As things seem to be going normally at BSPN, they may have the race on by the time the Rolex race is over.
Either way I won't even switch until the Rolex is over. At least there is usually some racing somewhere on the track AND they actually show it.

Daly Planet Editor said...

THIS JUST IN: ESPN has decided to show the entire NASCAR Nationwide Series qualifying show on ESPN Classic at 5:330PM.

No kidding!

Dot said...

Wouldn't it make more sense for NW and the trucks to be at the same track instead of NW all by itself? The trucks shouldn't have been at TX with the IRL.

Does the IRL still have their version of NW? If so, why not run those together?

@ tinytoes, Digger is a FOX creation. He's hibernating until Feb 2010.

@ JD, good grief. We already know what the line up is.

Karen said...

Not much excitement when you already know the results. I may be switching between NW and IRL. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to catch up with NW with all the commercials.

Dot said...

@ Anon 4:35, too funny.

@ JD, they're going to preempt bowling???? How dare they?

Mike said...

They're to the point where qualifying was stopped because of Atwood's situation. Have to see where they pick up coverage out of this commercial break.

Sophia said...

MW follows John Daly the golfer?? wow, that's weird. Maybe they are friends.

Just kind of ironic.

I am still watching ARCA and missing the ESPN chop suey.

Glenn said...

Daly Planet Editor said...
THIS JUST IN: ESPN has decided to show the entire NASCAR Nationwide Series qualifying show on ESPN Classic at 5:330PM


Tooooooooooooooooo
funny.

Dot said...

@ dear Sophia, too bad he doesn't follow our John Daly. Or does he?

Daly Planet Editor said...

8 min left?

Anonymous said...

@sophia--not weird at all. Mikey loves playing golf so I'm not surprised to see him following golfers. In fact a lot of the guys golf (drivers and crew) so they do like the impound tracks so they can go hit some balls :)

Mike said...

They even edited within segments. They say Shelby Howard was 32nd out of 37 cars that had qualified....then they show Shepherd going on the track and the ticker at the top showed 42 cars had qualified.

Dot said...

@ JD, they can't delay girl golf. Any sport on BSPN is more important than NASCAR racing.

Karen said...

Off to Belmont Stakes for me. See if Calvin Borel can pull off triple for jockeys.

Daly Planet Editor said...

Horsey race is 6:27PM on ABC.

Well, that Nationwide Series coverage was just a mess.

ARCA until 7PM and then racing from Nashville. IRL at 9PM from TMS.

Dot said...

@ JD, I'm being rhetorical here. Why didn't BSPN just show NW qual on CL in the first place @ 5:30 pm? It was already on delay.

The only reason I'm going to watch the race later is to be here at TDP.

The Loose Wheel said...

No phantom debris of the 89 right there thats for sure...

Dot said...

Joey Logano's been racing for 19 years? Do they even make 0-6 month old size driving suits?

The Loose Wheel said...

Had to win the race for the genetic derby....

LOL

Daly Planet Editor said...

Guess no one at ESPN Classic got the memo. Bowling on the air at 5:30PM instead of Nationwide Series.

What a mess today....

Anonymous said...

JD- I was just going to ask what happened to the re-air. ESPN is 0 for 4 this weekend. The mockery of first practice, no televised happy hour, a butchered version of tape delayed qualifying and the full re-air of qualifying that never happened.

snlfan3 said...

@jd As of 6:00 nationwide qualifying on Classic

Dot said...

@ JD, we're they waiting for the ARCA race to end?

Anonymous said...

Dear ESPN: I get it. If you show Qualifying hours after we know the results, the viewership will be low. Then you can say the low viewership proves ESPN should give priority to other sports.

Makiki
Hawaii

Glenn said...

JD, do you think they will even be ready for the race?

There is still 2 hours of Rolex racing left. It's actually live, with real people keeping up with the action. It can be done.

Andrew said...

I hate not having either Speed or Classic.

How did Bill, Wally, and Kyle do today?

stricklinfan82 said...

Just when I didn't think it could get worse than last night's ESPN practice debacle they one-upped themselves with the disaster that was their Nationwide qualifying coverage.

Again, they had the ESPN Classic network sitting there airing old taped junk but didn't even give the NASCAR fans that do get that channel the courtesy of moving the full live coverage (or even the tape-delayed 3:00 coverage) there, and giving everyone else the chopped up version on ESPN2 after baseball.

Absolutely embarrassing weekend for ESPN so far, I can only imagine what they have in store tonight. Sadly this ESPN debacle will only get much much worse before it gets better. In a few weeks the ESPN practice/qualifying TV blackouts and tape-delays will cross over to the Cup Series as well, the ESPN Classic overflow network will get a huge slash in viewership with the ESPNU swap, and college football season will be coming around the corner to make an even bigger mess of the Nationwide coverage.

JD, It's nice of you to bring up the unadvertised 6:00 full-length ESPN Classic re-air of Nationwide qualifying... but again that's way too little way too late, the damage has already been done to the fans that wanted to see qualifying in its entirety without having the outcome spoiled.

ESPN's doing a heck of a job if their motivation is actually to screw up so badly that NASCAR will let them out of that expensive NASCAR TV contract. It's just a shame the fans have to suffer so badly as a result.

Glenn said...

As I've said this year, I'm not watching ESPN except for the races and not using the audio then, listening to the radio coverage.
The thing about that is, there are 8 or so drivers in the Nationwide series I try to keep up with. Well when you don't watch, I don't know which sponsor to support, how the driver is, etc.
I do miss that part, but as long as ESPN treats us this way I'll have to live with it.
It seems after 3 years something would have been done about this.

Anonymous said...

So the move to 6:00 means that qualifying on Classic overlaps with NASCAR Countdown. I guess since they showed most, of not all GOGH cars during the original slot, ESPN doesn't care.

Daly Planet Editor said...

This looks to be a re-air of the one hour chopped version. Oh well..

Hotaru1787 said...

Yeah, that qualifying session was painful.

Least I got to see Erik Darnell run, 'bout the only one of my drivers I did see before abandoning it.

ARCA- The winner aside... zzzzzz.

Not sure if I can stand Jerry and BSPN tonight, and can't listen to MRN (listening to IMS radio netwrk from TMS)

Daly Planet Editor said...

There is a new post up for your comments on the Nationwide Series race from Nashville on ESPN2.

Thanks!

Rockin Rich said...

This is "somewhat" off topic, but it does relate to BSPN. Delete this if you wish JD. I just found the similarities of their Belmont Stakes, and NASCAR coverage styles striking.

BSPN mangled the Belmont Stakes coverage just as bad as they have NASCAR's. I started watching it, and gave up waaaay before post time. Even my wife, who really likes watching the 3 Triple Crown races said that the way they were presenting it was silly, and stupid. It was full of the same kind of meaningless fluff that they throw at us for NASCAR.

There was absolutely no comparison to the "relatively" classy presentation that NBC does of the Kentucky Derby, and Preakness. I was surprised they weren't broadcasting this too.

Apparently, it is in BSPN's DNA! I am soooo not looking forward to BSPN taking over Cup coverage.

Hey, JD; what happened to the CAPTCHA?

Anonymous said...

Just watched the ARCA race on Speed,Logano won,but that is not the story,kligerman is amazing,he got the lead,cut a tire,charged back to the front almost,cut a tire again and got back in three laps to finish in SIXTH place!Also Allie Owen is a female to watch,stayed in the top ten,NASCAR has been looking for a female to bring in,hope someone was paying attention.