Live Blogging Sprint Cup Series From Darlington (FOX - 7PM ET)

There are only four races left in the NASCAR on FOX television package for this season. After the next race in Dover, FOX takes a break for the All-Star race.

Darlington is a grind. Drivers tend to race the track and pass carefully. Now aero-sensitive as well, the old bump and run style is long gone from this historic track. Inches from the wall, drivers settle into a rhythm between stops for tires and fuel.

As television viewers discovered from the ESPN2 coverage of the Friday night Nationwide Series race, perspective is everything. Unless there is the ability to see cars in relationship to one another, Darlington race coverage can quickly look like practice.

This racing is different. Drivers pray through the corners, try to get a run down the straight and then get the pass completed before the entry of the next corner. He who is on the lowside heading into the turn normally wins.

This season FOX has chosen hype and drama as the theme of the coverage. While Darrell Waltrip rambles on from the TV booth, the director shows pictures of one or perhaps two cars shot as tightly as possible. Then, the coverage hops to another car and Waltrip begins to talk again.

This week, Waltrip will once again be with Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond on the pre-race stage to begin the coverage. This outdoor show has served to allow Waltrip to dominate the conversation from start to finish. His "Revved Up" segment allows him to tell adult fans what to think. He actually expresses anger with those who have opinions other than his.

Hammond is so far in the backseat this season he might as well mail it in. Rarely heard from once the racing begins, Hammond is not featured at the cutaway car, does not get questions from Mike Joy in the booth and is basically MIA after the green flag.

Larry McReynolds has been working on TV for a long time and this season has brought some very interesting twists. With his NASCAR Performance show now recorded during the week, his removal from the popular Trackside series and the ending of his signature "Reach up and pull those belts tight" phrase, you have to wonder what his future holds with FOX and SPEED.

Steve Byrnes, Matt Yocum, Krista Voda and Dick Berggren should have an interesting night. Darlington mandates four tires with a fuel stop and this season has seen few caution flags. If the race strings-out to single file running, there might not be a whole lot to talk about from pit road.

Expect the Ryan Newman and Juan Montoya story to pop-up in the pre-race show. One item to look for is how FOX handles the denial by JD Gibbs of the item reported by Waltrip last week. That was the apparently fake story about a pending crew chief swap between the 20 and 11 teams.

The sun will go down about 20 minutes after the race starts, so there should be a nice transition to pictures under the lights. At this track, low-angle speed shots and aerial views can serve to relay the perspective of the actual speed of the cars. That is a challenge as the mid-race portion of the event starts to drag.

Tonight has all the parts to be an outstanding event on the track and on TV. With Dover pending, a strong performance tonight in primetime would be a good way to get sports viewers back to NASCAR and focused on the stories of the season.

This post will serve to host your TV-related comments on the FOX coverage of the Sprint Cup Series race from Darlington, SC. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for stopping by.

Live Blogging Nationwide Series From Darlington (ESPN2 - 7PM ET)

ESPN is back after taking a week off. Darlington, SC is the location this weekend and the NASCAR Countdown show begins at 7PM ET.

Allen Bestwick is on with his team from the Infield Pit Studio. Tim Brewer is back with the Tech Garage. Marty Reid, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree are going to call the action. Vince Welch, Dave Burns and Mike Massaro are on pit road.

This race should once again feature the Sprint Cup Series stars against the Nationwide Series regulars. This has been the theme this season, but last week SPEED emphasized the NNS regulars and treated the Cup cross-overs like every other team.

It should be interesting to see if ESPN returns the focus to the Cup stars as the lights come on in Darlington.

This post will serve to host your comments on the Nationwide Series race from Darlington on ESPN2. To add your TV-related opinion, just click on the comments button below. Thanks for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet.

Mike Ford Asks For Truth From NASCAR Media

Denny Hamlin's crew chief was on the Thursday edition of SPEED's Race Hub program. Mike Ford was being interviewed by reporter Danielle Trotta when she brought up a sore subject.

John Nevins is a NASCAR fan from Daytona Beach, FL. Under the name Captain Thunder, Nevins produces the CaptainThunderRacing.com website and several other NASCAR-related projects.

The Wednesday, April 27 headline at CaptainThunderRacing.com read "Hamlin and Logano to Swap Crew Chiefs."

Here is part of the story published on that topic:

Sources confirmed to Captain Thunder Racing.com that a crew chief swap has been discussed and is imminent between the #11 and #20 teams. The swap would send Denny Hamlin's crew chief Mike Ford to the #20 garage, and Logano's crew chief Greg Zippadelli to the #11 garage.

Zippadelli, once the crew chief for two-time Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, will bring the championship experience to the #11 team that JGR feels Hamlin needs at this point in his career.

The very next day, a spokesman for Joe Gibbs Racing quickly denied that this story was true. The interesting part wasn't that he denied it. It was that the mainstream NASCAR media was using the Nevins story as the source for asking the question.

The response from Nevins was also swift. This on Friday, April 29:

We stand by our story - if both teams do not improve quickly, a change will be made. According to our sources, that decision has been made by Joe and J.D. Gibbs.

Ultimately, it was JD Gibbs who was sitting beside Kyle Busch in the Richmond Infield Media Ceter on the following Saturday night. Busch had won the race. Hamlin was second. Gibbs was once again asked about the Nevins story.

Yeah, you know, it was frustrating in a way. At times kind of comical. I think the website was Captain Thunder. I didn't know that website. C'mon, (if you) listen to that for your information, we're in trouble.

It was nice to put it to bed. Our guys did get a kick out of it. It's one of those things that when you're running not as well as you're used to, people are used to seeing you up front, they start asking questions, leap to crazy conclusions.

During the early part of this week, Gibbs also made the NASCAR TV rounds and used the interview opportunities to confirm that there had never been a discussion, even among JGR senior management, of swapping the Logano and Hamlin crew chiefs.

Thursday, it was Ford's turn to address the topic. His words bring-up a growing debate among hardcore fans. The question is, just who these days is a NASCAR media member?

"I feel like the (NASCAR) media has an obligation to report the truth," Ford told Trotta. "You get a guy who reports a non-truth. I think the media ought to bring him to the forefront so that others don't do that in the future."

Ford's words are interesting. On one hand, he sees a blog like CaptainThunderRacing.com as a member of the NASCAR media. On the other, he wants the "old guard" mainstream media to expose his verson of reality. That is that Nevins simply made the entire story up.

On the same Race Hub show as the Ford interview, Jeff Burton cooked burgers on the lawn of the SPEED studios, Jimmy Spencer delivered his weekly rant in a sombrero for Cinco de Mayo and Hermie Sadler said cooler temps at Darlington will make it more comfortable for fans in the stands. It's not rocket science.

What is upsetting to many is that Nevins seems to be using this type of innuendo as a promotional tool for his website. The parties mentioned by Nevins as the ones making the potential crew chief swap said it never happened. Meanwhile, Nevins continues to fish for new fans on his website, Facebook and Twitter pages by using the denials from JGR as his own red badge of courage.

Where do you draw the line? Should an amateur blogger's story using mystery sources and innuendo send the mainstream NASCAR media running to cover it like breaking news? Was the mainstream media used? In journalism terms, that is called the tail wagging the dog.

That expression is used when suddenly the parts of an equation thought to be the least important become the most important. Suddenly, veteran NASCAR reporters are asking questions based on a report from a website created by a fan. It kind of makes one wonder what this weekend holds in Captain Thunder land?

To add your opinion on this topic, just click the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for taking the time to stop by.