If the Saturday Nationwide Series race was any indication, this could be the best race of the year. With a lot on the line, the Sprint Cup Series races at Kansas up against the afternoon NFL games on TV once again.
Nicole Briscoe will open the telecast with Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty from the Infield Pit Studio. The choice is to tell the story of the race or concentrate on the Chase. It should be interesting to see what topics are selected to discuss.
Allen Bestwick will call the race with Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree alongside. This trio is having a good Chase, with Jarrett fading into the background. Petree is much more opinionated and often the telecast finds Jarrett agreeing with his points over and over again.
Dr. Jerry Punch, Jamie Little, Vince Welch and Dave Burns will be on pit road. These four will probably being saying the words "fuel mileage" a lot today. Tim Brewer will be in the Tech Garage.
ESPN made a wholesale change in the Saturday race. The network focused on the Nationwide Series regulars and did not interview big names like Carl Edwards and Danica Patrick until the end of the pre-race show. The actual telecast was also different.
The coverage looked like a Camping World Truck Series race on SPEED for the first half of the event. Cameras stayed wide, aerial shots were uses and the director chased the best racing on the track instead of staying with the leaders.
In the second half of the race, the "Hyper-tight" coverage returned and immediately missed a key incident on the track. While the finish line coverage was outstanding, ESPN still cannot resist continually zooming-in on one or two cars at a time. It's a curse.
The weather is great, the stories are good and ESPN has all the bells and whistles to make this an outstanding telecast. Media types have picked Carl Edwards as the car to beat.
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