NASCAR.com's RaceView Free This Weekend

NASCAR TV has come a long way since the early days of Ken Squier and the Daytona 500 on CBS being mixed with taped highlights on ABC's Wide World of Sports.

Now, a multi-billion dollar TV contract brings three TV networks to the coverage of all the Sprint Cup Series races each season. But, that is not the only way to watch the action. Most fans know about the Hot Pass service that is available to DirecTV users, by only 17 of the 80 million TV homes in the US have DirectTV.

A viable solution for several seasons has been located on the Internet. Turner Sports Interactive pays NASCAR a lot of money to operate the NASCAR.com website. This group recently was given the NBA.com website by that organization and is one of the premier groups at pushing the website technology envelope.

Over the years, the video element of NASCAR.com has developed slowly but surely. This application works just like watching a video on YouTube. A fan goes to NASCAR.com, clicks on the video link and watches any of a host of recorded videos or live broadcasts. As with many things in life, to get the really good stuff requires parting with a little cash.

This weekend in Richmond, fans can see all the features of the high-end live video feed when NASCAR.com's Sprint RaceView is offered completely free for the Sprint Cup Series race. Click here to go directly to the page for the free service.

Earlier this season, TNT offered a similar broadband Internet application and called it RaceBuddy. It turned out to be a smashing success for one reason. It was free. The vast majority of NASCAR fans are already paying a hefty cable TV bill, so RaceBuddy worked to put TV viewers in the position of also watching the computer screen at the same time. There were lots of new first-time "NASCAR multi-taskers" this summer.

That is the concept that RaceView subscribers know all too well. RaceView has all kinds of gizmo's and gadgets, but the best is the driver audio selections and the ability to change camera angles. I have to admit that having the ability to pause and rewind just like a DVR or TiVo is also kind of cool.

While I have seen the demo, I have never subscribed to RaceView so I will also be sampling it for the first time this weekend. The folks at Turner tell me that even if the race is delayed to Sunday or even Monday, they will stick around and provide the entire event for free.

Reading the NASCAR.com website, the company is also offering a low price for all The Chase races to anyone who likes what they see this weekend and signs-up for 2009.

With many computer towers and laptops now being able to plug directly into HDTV sets, this weekend also may be an opportunity for some more adventurous types to see what RaceView looks like on a big HDTV screen. I look forward to hearing from those folks.

Before anyone goes off on a tangent, let's make one thing clear. There is no doubt that the front page of the NASCAR.com website is a mess. We know it, the fans know it and the Turner folks know it. It is one page on the Internet trying very hard to serve far too many masters. That will be a topic for another time.

I would suggest that fans can look for a major re-vamp of NASCAR.com with new technology and applications before Daytona in 2009. But for right now, please take a moment and let us know if you are going to sample RaceView this weekend.

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Erin Crocker Moves To TV Broadcast Booth

The SPEED team is spread pretty thin this weekend. The Truck Series gang is over at Gateway for a Saturday afternoon race while the Sprint Cup team is on-hand in Richmond for all the TV shows from the SPEED Stage.

Meanwhile, the ARCA Series is racing as a companion to the IRL weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. SPEED will be covering that race for a tape-delayed airing on Sunday at 4PM.

The versatile Ralph Sheheen is going to call the ARCA action with series regular Jim Tretow and sports car veteran Brian Till handling the pit road action. Joining Shaheen in the broadcast booth for the first time will be driver Erin Crocker.

This is an interesting step for Crocker, whose driving career has been off-balance since her stormy tenure at Evernham Motorsports.

This versatile driver started in quarter midgets at 7 years old. While getting a bachelor's degree in Industrial and Management Engineering at RPI University, Crocker drove in both the 360 Sprints and the 410 Dirt Sprint Series, ultimately winding-up behind the wheel of a World of Outlaws car.

In 2005, she was one of the drivers who joined the Evernham Motorsports driver development program. She drove in selected ARCA, Busch and Craftsman Truck Series races, finishing 25th in the 2006 Truck Series standings.

Also in 2006, former Evernham Motorsports driver Jeremy Mayfield called Ray Evernham out when Mayfield blamed a personal relationship between the then-married Evernham and the unmarried Crocker for affecting Mayfield's NASCAR team. Crocker's career never recovered and she has been seen less-and-less in the professional stock car ranks.

Evernham admitted to USA Today (click here) in July of 2007 that his relationship with Crocker affected her career. Evernham is 51 and Crocker is 27.

The coming weekend will give Crocker an opportunity to get her face back in the public eye and lend some commentary to a series with which she is very familiar. Sheheen is a true TV professional and just the right person to work with a new announcer.

Crocker has most recently been in the news (click here) for racing with Evernham in a new car designed as an entry-level affordable sprint car.

Evernham continues as a part-owner of Gillett-Evernham Motorsports and this season began a part-time career as a TV commentator exclusively for ESPN's NASCAR coverage.

Crocker is not scheduled to work any additional events for SPEED at this time, we will update her status as a broadcaster if additional information becomes available.

(photo courtesy of Terry Renna/AP - ARCA Pole in 2007 at Daytona Beach, FL)

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Updated: Hurricane Season Comes Calling

Update: Tropical Storm Hanna slowed down and is only expected to be passing Northern Florida on Friday afternoon, so the Nationwide Series race from Richmond looks good. Unfortunately, it is forecast to be over Virginia on Saturday evening. Weather.com has the projected path.

Living on the Southeast coast of Florida I have had the pleasure of three hurricanes over the past couple of years and a tropical storm just last week which left behind fourteen inches of rain as a present.

The picture above is the eye of Hurricane Jeanne literally over my house. We were almost a month without power. That little white blotch to the left is Lake Okeechobee. To give you some perspective on the size of the storm, Lake Okeechobee is the second largest freshwater lake in the US behind Lake Michigan. It has its own zip code.

Now, the tropics are swirling once again and this time things are not looking too good for the ESPN gang on Saturday night. The Rock and Roll 400 in Richmond is the first Sprint Cup Series race that ESPN is producing in the ABC package.

As of 8PM on Tuesday, Tropical Storm Hanna was expected to become a hurricane, slide up the Florida coast and be in the Virginia area on Saturday night. The rainfall in advance of the storm may well play a role in the Friday night Nationwide Series race as well. Saturday does not look good at all.

ESPN's David Newton updated host Ryan Burr on Tuesday's NASCAR Now about NASCAR's contingency plans. Newton's comments were that NASCAR would focus on the Sprint Cup Series race and move the Nationwide Series to Sunday or even Monday if weather cancelled the events on Friday night.

In terms of the big ABC race on Saturday, his comment was that NASCAR would stay and try to race on Sunday morning. This would presumably get the teams and transporters out of the track and on the way back to North Carolina in a timely fashion late Sunday afternoon. If worse came to worse, they would try to race on Monday morning.

Newton did not mention anything about the ABC or ESPN contingency plans. The ABC Network does not have network sports access on Sunday mornings across the four time zones of its affiliate stations. Sunday afternoon has a live WNBA game at 1:00PM Eastern Time followed at 3:30PM by the live IRL race from Chicagoland. Cross ABC off the list.

Sunday morning finds ESPN itself involved in the two-hour highly-rated NFL Countdown show. That program runs from 11AM to 1PM live and then transitions to a college football weekend wrap-up show. Cross ESPN off the list.

It looks like ESPN2 will be the intended target for the Cup Series in the same way that Richmond seems to be a potential destination for Hanna. We must make sure to add to this a term that we Floridians know all too well. I think it is one of the greatest phrases of the English language.

We have to remember that all of this is still in...say it with me..."the cone of uncertainty." Possibly the best term ever invented since "actions detrimental to stock car racing."

Basically, no one knows where a force of nature like a hurricane is headed so teams will be experiencing a very interesting weekend of weather as they travel from the Mooresville, NC area to suburban Henrico County, Virginia.

We will continue to add updated info to this post throughout the week and try to keep everyone updated on the series and the TV network plans for the weekend.

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