ESPN gets back in the mix with Marty Smith in the Infield Pit Studio for the pre-race show as Rusty Wallace has the weekend off. Smith has been great and his opinions and comments are exactly what this telecast has needed. Wallace has his son Steven running at RIR in a Roush-prepared car, so it should be interesting to keep an eye on how much air time Steven gets, despite his position on the track.
Allen Bestwick is going to be a welcome voice as he leads Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree through this telecast. This race has all kind of drivers in the field and the action may be much more intense than the Cup race. Remember, those drivers seem to be "points racing" this season in almost every event.
ESPN has struggled with production on short tracks and Richmond's action is intense. We will use this post for your TV comments on this telecast. Just click the comments button to add your opinion. Thanks!
17 comments:
With no R Wallace I'll get to watch the entire broadcast. Marty Smith is excellent
JD
Have you ever been to Richmond?
My god the tight shots are awful. One shot zoomed into just the windshield of Ryan Blaney.
sbtf,
Went to VCU. Went to the races at the old state fairgrounds.
Went back with ESPN. Love that place.
JD
Thanks jd
I asked that b/c i listened to the 1982 Richmond 400 on MRN.com today
ESPN really struggles covering the racing. It doesn't seem like the director has a sense of racing, watching the drivers set up a pass over a few laps. Instead of following some battles over a few laps, ESPN randomly driver hops. The director picks a storyline driver to focus on, and the shot tightens to feature just 1 car on the screen. While the booth obsesses over 1 driver, ESPN misses the battles on track and goes to the replay to show what they missed. I think that really makes the races come off worse than they really are.
They also failed to follow up on Robert Richardson. The guy hit ESPN's girl! That should make him relevant enough to cover as his car smokes.
They're doing it now. First Danica, then Kurt Busch, now Ryan Blaney...and off to commercial.
Busch....awful. We are killing them on Twitter. Just killing them for this mess. Fans ain't having it.
If I wanted to read twitter...
I would. I don't need some DA talking head on TV reading it to me!
Cover the dang race please!
there's just no perspective on the racetrack here. I've been to Richmond many times, and I can barely recognize it. I think I have these on tape from the old days. Have to pull one out to compare.
Unless we get a caution, ESPN just missed the most dramatic moment of the night under commercial. Now they are right back to commercial with under 30 to go.
And hi troll! I'm honored you find me important enough to impersonate.
They should just park all the cars, have a camera on a boom swirl around each one, and then pick who wins!
Never have to rebuild an engine, fix any sheet metal, or burn any gas!!!
And whatever story you want to make... WILL come true!
ESPN is lucky Denny Hamlin put on a fight. It would have been embarrassing to miss the final lead change under commercial.
How about that shot of only 2 cars finishing the race? Pretty poor effort by ESPN tonight.
2 cars finished on TV. Rest of the lead lap cars, not a moment of TV time.
Well, baseball was a drag tonight as Reds continue to leave RISP and not get hits. But I listened on radio and love the announcers. And they did rally back late from 6-0 to finish 6-4!
I saw a couple of Tweets how horrid the camera work was on the NNS so turned on for 120 seconds and just saw commercials so turned off the tv. Just a damn shame. They've turned it into "musical chairs" with the constant camera jumping.
People running the truck camera choices should be fired.
Where's that big mouth Donald Trump when you need him?
Not that either option is even adequate, but I would take tonight's coverage over FOX's shenanigans any day.
There is a new post up for comments on the NNS race from RIR on ESPN2.
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