Saturday, July 31, 2010

Live Blogging Nationwide Series At Iowa Speedway (ESPN2 - 7PM ET)


This stand-alone Nationwide Series race gives ESPN an opportunity to split the crew and allow some folks to take new roles in the telecast.

Originally, Vince Welch was coming to Iowa to call the play-by-play. Unfortunately, Welch was in a minor traffic accident Thursday in Indy and has decided to sit this one out. He is uninjured, but a telecast like this would be a bit much for him right now.

Instead, Dave Burns will return to fill that role. He will be joined by Ricky Craven and Ray Evernham. My mistake from the original posting. Working on other things today and I apologize for the error. Probably won't be the last!

On pit road will be Shannon Spake, Rick DeBruhl and Jim Noble. DeBruhl has long been a utility player for ESPN and is a local station reporter from the Phoenix area. Noble worked hard this summer as the Race Buddy pit reporter and is a radio veteran.

Iowa is sold out and the crowd should be rocking. While several Sprint Cup Series drivers made the trip from Pocono, it should be a good opportunity for some Nationwide Series regulars to get some media attention.

The track is easy to cover and basically made for TV. Great lighting and cameras embedded in the racing surface make the track shine in HD. Hopefully, there is an aerial shot available as this facility looks great at night.

This post will serve to host your comments on the ESPN2 coverage of the Nationwide Series from Iowa Speedway. To add your TV-related opinion, just click on 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 The Daly Planet.

Live Blogging Camping World Trucks At Pocono (SPEED - 12:30PM ET)


The Camping World Truck Series is set to debut at Pocono Raceway. After qualifying on Saturday morning, the race coverage gets underway with the pre-race show at 12:30PM.

Krista Voda hosts The Setup with Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander as the reporters. Rick Allen and Phil Parsons are going to be joined in the TV booth by Darrell Waltrip. Younger brother Michael is in Belgium racing sports cars with his business partner in MWR.

Pocono is a track that can get boring very fast if the field strings-out quickly. If the trucks stay bunched, it can be exciting. The TV challenge is not a big one as the track is so big and so wide the director is sometimes just searching for any interesting visuals.

As with most NASCAR races on TV, the crunch times are the pit stops and the final few laps. Pocono has a straight and wide pit road, so doing a triple split for caution flag stops and keeping a perspective for stops under green should be easy to do.

The final run off turn three to the finish is long and straight, so crunch time on the final lap is getting the field through turns two and three. This is going to be especially interesting if there has been a green/white/checkered finish set-up.

Waltrip is now being featured by SPEED and Foxsports.com long after the FOX portion of the TV coverage has been done. This newer profile has gotten mixed reviews from fans at TDP, so it should be interesting how DW fits into this team with Michael absent.

This post will serve to host your comments on the Camping World Truck Series coverage from Pocono on SPEED. To add your TV-related comment, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for stopping by.