Here are some topics and notes as the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series teams get ready to head-off to road course races in Sonoma, CA and Elkhart Lake, WI.
NASCAR President Mike Helton will be on the Tuesday edition of SPEED's Race Hub at 7:30PM. There are lots of topics to discuss at this time of the season. Pocono winner Denny Hamlin will also be on the show.
Update: Helton will also appear on Showtime's Inside NASCAR series on Wednesday night at 10PM. This show will be simulcast online at NASCAR.com without charge. Helton will be discussing the state of the sport at length with Michael Waltrip, Brad Daugherty and Randy Pemberton. Chris Myers hosts this series.
Neither practice or qualifying sessions are going to be televised for the Nationwide Series this weekend from Road America. This event comes right in the middle of a program time crunch for ESPN that includes World Cup Soccer. There will also be no Sunday morning NASCAR Now show on ESPN2 to preview the Sunday race for the same reason.
ESPN shuffles the line-up again for the Road America Nationwide Series race on Saturday. Allen Bestwick will host the pre-race NASCAR Countdown show and then call the action with Rusty Wallace and Andy Petree in the booth. Dale Jarrett and Brad Daugherty are off this weekend. NASCAR Now host Mike Massaro will break out the firesuit and join Dr. Jerry Punch and Jamie Little to handle the pit reporting.
Darrell Waltrip returns for this second of four appearances on SPEED's Sunday RaceDay show. Hermie Sadler will be joining Waltrip on the SPEED Stage as Kenny Wallace is off racing at Road America. Wendy Venturini will be one reporter, we are waiting for SPEED to tell us who else will be joining the show.
Some fans have been asking about TNT's habit of slowly spinning the infield "rig" during the pre-race show. The network has done it every season, but apparently some fans now have new and large HD screens. The effect is much different. "HDesick" is a term one fan suggested. Those comments have been passed along.
SPEED advised on Monday that the network is on the verge of crossing the 76 million home barrier. The network also continues to roll-out SPEEDHD and will be opening the online SPEED2 broadband channel in two weeks. We will have more on SPEED2 next week in terms of programming schedules and availability. Right now, you must subscribe to SPEED TV or SPEEDHD in order to receive the SPEED2 online content.
The latest questions from the NASCAR Fan Council did not concern TV or radio, but the drivers. There were questions that basically boiled down to which drivers fans liked and which they disliked and why. In the past, this information has been used to affect many changes within the sport. It's kind of interesting that driver popularity is now the topic.
At this time, there are still no numbers available for how many homes bought the PPV live Prelude to a Dream charity race last week. The PPV money is the primary provider of the funding for the various charities benefiting from the event. We will keep up to date on this topic until we get the information.
Just like last weekend, Elliott Sadler will step aside and be replaced by Darrell Waltrip on the Friday night Trackside show. It will be Jeff Hammond who then partners with John Roberts on the Sunday night Victory Lane program. These moves are in response to Kyle Petty being gone for six races while working for TNT.
The Sounds of NASCAR series this season on SPEED has been popular. Starting next week the title of the show will change to NASCAR Hot Wired. That should be reflected in the cable TV listings.
We will update this page with any additional TV/media news that happens on Tuesday. As always, please feel free to offer your comments on any of the topics above. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thanks for stopping by!
