Truck Series Back At The Perfect Track

Here come the trucks again and this time the racing will be more about beating and banging than aero push and drafting. Saturday afternoon, the Camping World Trucks will be running at the bullring in Martinsville, VA. The ultimate payback track.

Krista Voda starts the coverage at 1:30PM with The Setup. Pit reporters Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander provide the interviews. There are some new faces, some Cup Series cross-over drivers and several good storylines unfolding in this series.

Rick Allen comes along at 2PM to call the race. As usual, he will have Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip alongside. It's been an interesting couple of weeks for these two gentlemen, especially where their shared Sprint Cup Series ownership interests are concerned. Waltrip even started and parked one of Parsons' Cup cars in Bristol last week.

Waltrip suggests that spending the weekend with the Parsons crew allowed him to prepare better for Talladega, where he will be racing Parsons' car for the entire event. Money is doing a lot of talking in the sport where these two are concerned.

The trucks need a solid show of good racing to get the series back into the TV highlights and return it to the popularity of 2009. The CWTS schedule for this season leaves a lot to be desired during this early stretch.

The familiar CWTS production team from SPEED is handling this event. That should result in some old school NASCAR TV and get away from what FOX has been offering. Following the leader and overusing in-car cameras has made the Cup Series tough to watch at times this year. SPEED follows the stories, shows the racing and lets the pit reporters provide a lot of information.

Rain washed out much of Friday's activity, including the CWTS qualifying. We will provide updates on this post and on Twitter about the weather during the morning hours. Larry McReynolds, amateur meteorologist, said the rain would clear out well before the truck race.

The big twist on Saturday is the low-key introduction of TruckBuddy. The folks at Turner Interactive, through the NASCAR.com website, are offering the CWTS version of RaceBuddy. Click here for the direct link to the page.

Although slightly smaller and with a few less features, having an online application like this for the race is a big step in the right direction. Letting fans get involved in picking video streams and choosing cameras while watching the race on SPEED is the wave of the future.

Hopefully, the success of this TruckBuddy experiment may lead to the application being sponsored and rolled-out again this season. Dodge is using the Ram brand to pay the bill and let users have TruckBuddy for free on Saturday. Nice move.

Let's use this post to get your comments before, during and after the CWTS race from Martinsville. 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!

Jimmy Spencer Adds Some Friday TV Spice

Martinsville is a FOX and SPEED weekend. The Camping World Trucks run on SPEED Saturday and the Sprint Cup Series airs live Sunday on FOX. That leaves all day Friday and Saturday morning for SPEED to cover practice and qualifying sessions for both series.

Bridging the gaps in this part of the weekend schedule is a show called NASCAR Live. Originally, it was just host John Roberts sitting alone on the SPEED Stage with two roving reporters combing through the garage for interviews and news. Now, it seems that things have changed.

Once again this weekend, the Friday and Saturday editions of this program will be a little larger. Roberts will be joined on the SPEED Stage by Hermie Sadler and Jimmy Spencer. If you squint your eyes a bit, it kind of looks like the RaceDay line-up.

NASCAR Live will be helped by Bob Dillner and Randy Pemberton reporting from the garage areas. In addition, Steve Byrnes will be sitting-in for Roberts on several of the live programs. Roberts has a little two-hour show called RaceDay to prepare for on Sunday morning.

Over the past several years, Roberts has been clutch in his ability to flex this program with what was actually happening at the track and on TV. He has been sitting in the rain, dealing with TV technical problems and and frying in the summer heat while bridging the gap between live sessions on the track.

SPEED is being very smart in ramping-up these programs and trying to bring a top notch level of coverage across the board. The NASCAR on FOX announce team of Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds handles all the Sprint Cup Series activity. Meanwhile, SPEED's Camping World Truck Series team of Rick Allen, Michael Waltrip and Phil Parsons covers the truck sessions.

Since Spencer was removed from the RaceDay and Victory Lane programs, he has been pushed into an off-balance thirty minute rant and rave show called What's the Deal? Click here to review the recent TDP column where we asked why Mr. Excitement had been buried after line dancing cowboys and a meatball making chef.

Spencer was also on NASCAR Live last week in Bristol. His appearances made one thing very clear. He still does not get it. TV needs Spencer to address an issue, stick to that issue and then be quiet. Adding Sadler to the panel means that there will also be another viewpoint represented and that is very healthy.

Just when Roberts had gotten used to looking over and seeing Kyle Petty, he now gets to see Spencer once again. Both Roberts and Byrnes get the challenge of seeing just what Spencer can bring to this program which was already going quite well with Sadler flying solo.

So, in between sessions on the track, make sure and keep an eye on the new line-up of NASCAR Live. The complete Friday and Saturday NASCAR TV schedule is on the right side of the TDP homepage.

We will use this post to offer comments on all the Friday TV on SPEED from Martinsville. To add your comment, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, so please keep that in mind when posting. Sometimes, comments are moderated before being posted. Thanks for dropping by The Daly Planet.

SPEED Introduces TruckBuddy For Martinsville

We have been moaning a lot this season about the fact that the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series have no online video applications. Last summer, RaceBuddy from TNT was tons of fun and injected a brand new user experience into NASCAR racing.

Although the folks from Turner Interactive said they were talking with FOX and ESPN, only SPEED has made a move to increase the online interactivity for the fans. The formal announcement is expected on Thursday, but the CWTS version of RaceBuddy will be called TruckBuddy and debut at Martinsville.

The link for TruckBuddy can be directly accessed by clicking here. The NASCAR.com website, which is owned and run by Turner, is the launching pad for all of the online NASCAR applications. These folks have come a long way, but it is a shame that things are progressing so slowly with this technology.

The TruckBuddy application will have four live race video streams, a dedicated backstretch camera, two in-truck cameras and one pit road cam. It will also feature the ability to chat live using several different social media applications including Facebook and Twitter.

NASCAR fans are notorious multi-taskers. At the track, team radio scanners and Sprint Fan Viewers are all over the place. Fans are using cell phones to take pictures and people are texting and tweeting before, during and after the race. We like to communicate!

The RaceBuddy application has some more gizmos attached like a battle cam for the best racing on the track and several team audio links, but for the truck series and Martinsville, this is a solid start.

It should be interesting to see if veteran tweeter Michael Waltrip joins the TruckBuddy conversation on Twitter from his perch in the TV announce booth for SPEED. Other announcers on the team like Krista Voda and Adam Alexander are still getting the hang of using Twitter as an easy way to communicate directly with the fans.

The only downside of this project is that for right now TruckBuddy is a one race deal. Hopefully, some good fan feedback and strong use of the program during the race will help SPEED, Turner and the sponsor Dodge to add more races down the road.

TNT has already committed to bringing RaceBuddy back for the six race summer package. This was a huge hit, especially when TNT added a dedicated pit reporter and began to figure out that many NASCAR fans already watched the race while online.

It is ESPN that really needs to look into RaceBuddy. They have the final seventeen Sprint Cup Series races and having all these bells and whistles for viewers to play with is only going to strengthen the ratings. No one turns off the TV with RaceBuddy. It simply is an addition to the television experience.

Thanks to Dodge for using their Ram brand to sponsor TruckBuddy this Saturday and keep it free for all fans. That is the best part of the experience. There is nothing to pay, nothing to join and no big program to download. The official news release from Turner and NASCAR.com will come out Thursday, so we will attach it to this story so everyone can see the details.

Are you one of the fans that will try TruckBuddy? Do you already multi-task online during the races? Maybe you could tell us what you would like to see added to this online application for the summer Cup races and beyond? Take a moment and leave us an opinion.

To add your comment, 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 entire NASCAR TV schedule for the weekend is posted on the TDP homepage.