At 11:30AM on Saturday, the TNT trio of Adam Alexander, Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach will be on TV. The Sprint Cup Series cars will be qualifying at Pocono for the first TNT race of the season on Sunday. But, there is a catch.
TNT provides no support programming to NASCAR of any kind. The qualifying will be on SPEED. Lindsay Czarniak and Larry McReynolds will be standing around in the infield as they did on Friday. Apparently, the TNT infield rig is just for Sundays. Matt Yocum and Ralph Sheheen will also be walking around pit road as reporters for the session.
NASCAR qualifying will not be the first live racing of the day on SPEED. At 8:30AM the network begins an unprecedented effort to provide coverage of the entire 24 Hours of LeMans, including a pre and post-race show. The coverage will begin on SPEED and then move to SPEEDtv.com when Pocono qualifying begins.
The picture above is of the LeMans entry that will be piloted by Micheal Waltrip and two other drivers. The car starts 15th in the GTE Pro Class and will grid in the 44th overall position. The Ferrari 458 Italia is the only car in the field with three rookies as the driving team. As with everything else Waltrip does, this should be interesting to watch.
After the Le Mans and Pocono programs, SPEED continues with qualifying coverage of the Canadian F-1 Grand Prix at 2PM ET. Next, it's back to Le Mans with continuous coverage until 8PM. Then, it's time for the ARCA folks to race at Pocono, even though the race is same-day delayed. No lights at the big triangle.
There is an hour of AMA Motocross scheduled at 10PM and then the big block of live Le Mans programming returns as the night gives way to the day and one of the most spectacular finishes in motorsports.
This post will serve to host your comments on the big day of motorsports TV on Saturday. There are plenty of NASCAR connections running throughout these programs and the motorsports world is ultimately very small. To add your comments, just click on the comments button below. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.
For those who are going to watch the LeMans race, here's a handy chart to keep the 56 car entries and their drivers straight:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spotterguides.com/
Enjoy!
--KarenB
What's the over/under on Tricky Triangle? That will be this weekend's most annoying phrase by far.
ReplyDeleteThat's gonna make the highlight reel. Why are they letting people in a place like that? Glad everyone seems okay.
ReplyDeleteHeading out for some errands, hope to be back for cup qualifying.
Dangerous accident in the first hour of Le Mans. One car nearly jumped the tire barrier, showering spectators with debris, including a tire. Lots of updates on the driver's condition (he walked away) but not that first word on potential spectator injuries. They're rerun it several times; I assume they wouldn't do so if someone was visibly hurt.
ReplyDeleteOur friends over at Jalopnik.com have the accident video posted. Driver walked away, no spectator injuries.
ReplyDeletePhotographers and marshals in that area, definitely not spectators. They generally try to make things as safe as possible for us (I'm a motorsports photographer) but some risk is accepted as part of the job. Very, very lucky no one got killed.
ReplyDeleteI know this was mentioned yesterday but why is Lindsay and Larry Mac standing on pit road? TNT could only get the infield studio for Sunday? Why have hosts and no studio and where will they go if it rains? Garage maybe?
ReplyDeletestrange
Anon, the only infield facility is the TNT infield rig. As I mentioned in my post, that is for TNT use only.
ReplyDeleteJD
I didn't get to see practice. Were Larry and Lindsay useful in their roles? I don't really see what they could add. The traditional SPEED practice session broadcasts with the booth & 2 reporters seems more logical.
ReplyDeleteSPEED's live stream of the 24 Hours of Le Mans says "Optimized for iPad." Looks like SPEED is getting better with their online streaming, maybe our friends at Turner will catch on.....
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:31
ReplyDeleteIf you mean the over/under on the first commercial break I am setting it at 9 (aasuming green flag laps)
Anon - they will say Tricky Triangle at least a dozen times in the pre-race show alone!
ReplyDeletedan wheldon is doing pretty well as a commentator on indy race
ReplyDeleteAgree Wheldon IS doing well in the booth.
ReplyDeleteWhat we want to know is who is DIRECTING this race. Too many in car cams for us :(
I thought Wells was going to do some Indycar this year but THIS does not look like his usual good work from NASCAR on TNT.
It's really annoying to have PASSES seen with side car cam...same thing that ran me OFF of NASCAR races :(
When I try to ch surf to Le Mans, its a darn commercial.
P.S. Great camera work for END of Indycar race.
ReplyDeleteA STEADY CAMERA on the finish line from a distance for at LEAST 20+ seconds. AMAZING.
The director/producer at least allowed us to see the cars whiz over the line.
Course in Indycar, they look alike to me & I can't tell who's driving what but I digress
:-D
I've been watching the EuroSport coverage because they show the entire race. They recognize that one of the most important races of the year shouldn't be interrupted by QUALIFYING.
ReplyDeleteWith a 24 hour race to cover, they have plenty of time to get commercials in. That's especially true because many of them are only 10 seconds long. I don't belive that they've been away at commercials for more than 30 seconds.
many times they've gone a minute or more without saying anything. Just watch the cars and listen to the race.
They don't hesitate to call out when the cameramen are showing the wrong angle or wondering why they aren't showing the incident that's just been announced by race control. They also are quick to correct each other when someone's made a ridiculous statement or hasn't been listening to what's just been said.
Nobody is telling me what shock absorbers do, nobody is telling me what things were like when they were driving. There are no animated sequences that fill up half the screen. They don't have a Pizza Hut Favorite Driver or the Dodge Hard Charger of the race.
They not only acknowledge that there are other race series, but they provide updates on NASCAR and Indycar so that we don't have to play commercial tag switching between channels in an effort to get an update.
Not only is it watchable, it's watchable for sixteen hours straight.