Live Blogging Whelen Mods From Bristol (SPEED - 6PM ET)

Every year the Whelen Modified Tour fights for TV time. Bristol Motor Speedway gives the teams an opportunity for national TV on a Wednesday. Sometimes, something is better than nothing.

The good news is that Mod fan Mike Joy is calling the race along with regional racing expert Dick Berggren. Bob Dillner, who is also deeply involved in the regional racing scene, will be the pit road reporter.

It's great of SPEED to air this race that gives fans an opportunity to see the teams and personalities of a tour that is famous throughout the greater New England area.

The Mods put on a great show and the bumping and passing style of the series should make for some interesting racing. Look for Joy to pass along a lot of information about the drivers and the history of this tour during the telecast.

This post will serve to host your comments on the SPEED coverage of the Whelen Modified Tour from the Bristol Motor Speedway. To add your TV-related comments, just click on the comments button below.

Weird Week Of NASCAR TV

This week is always a little bit different for several reasons. Luckily, both SPEED and ESPN have the Bristol Motor Speedway TV scheduling information out for viewers in a timely fashion.

Things kick-off Wednesday with the Whelen Modifieds and the Camping World Truck Series on SPEED. The truck TV team of Rick Allen, Michael Waltrip and Phil Parsons will offer qualifying at 5PM ET to start the day.

Then, coverage of the Modified race will begin at 6PM. Mike Joy and Dick Berggren will be in the booth for this event with Bob Dillner working pit road. These three men are deeply into the regional racing scene and always have a blast with this telecast.

Krista Voda, Hermie Sadler and Ray Dunlap start the truck series pre-race show at 7:30PM and then race coverage begins shortly after 8PM. SPEED continues to present the most consistent TV coverage of any NASCAR national touring series with the truck telecasts.

Thursday is Food City Race Night in beautiful downtown Bristol, featuring the hot rod shopping cart seen above. So there is no TV from the track, just NASCAR Now and RaceHub will be providing the usual Thursday programs.

Things pick back up in a big way on Friday. SPEED is once again providing all the support programming right up to race time. Rick Allen, Jeff Hammond and Phil Parsons will work the Nationwide Series sessions. Mike Joy, Larry McReynolds and Jeff Hammond will handle the Sprint Cup Series activities.

Both qualifying sessions will be on SPEED, with the Nationwide Series at 3:30PM and the Sprint Cup at 5PM. As usual, John Roberts will handle the gaps between the on-track sessions with his NASCAR Live show. Randy Pemberton will be his reporter this weekend.

Marty Reid and the ESPN gang finally show up on Friday night at 7PM for a thirty minute pre-race show and then the Nationwide Series race. It's the usual cast of characters with Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree working with Reid.

It's always interesting to watch ESPN try to squeeze 11 on-air voices into a live telecast from a track where a green flag laps takes less than fifteen seconds. Even more interesting are the commercial breaks. Think of it this way, two laps missed for every thirty second spot.

Mike Massaro offers NASCAR Now on ESPN2 at 10AM on Saturday from the other Bristol with Ricky Craven in the studio. David Newton will be reporting from the track. This is the hour long Sprint Cup Series preview edition.

The chaos that is SPEED's RaceDay is always amplified for the Bristol night race. 5PM should bring an interesting group of fans to the stage for John Roberts, Kyle Petty and Kenny Wallace. As usual, Wendy Venturini and Hermie Sadler will be holding down the fort in the infield.

The Sprint Cup Series race is on ABC and that poses a couple of problems this time of year. Those come in the form of NFL preseason games being carried by some ABC stations that will be preempting the live race.

Here is the information offered by ESPN for fans in those markets:

Due to some ABC affiliates carrying telecasts of NFL pre-season football games or other programming on Saturday night, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Bristol will air regionally on ESPN2 in eight markets: Nashville, Tenn.; Duluth and Rochester, Minn.; Phoenix; Casper, Wy.; Sioux Falls and Rapid City, S.D.; and Weslaco, Tex. In Houston, the race will air on the local ABC affiliate's digital tier station.

What this essentially means is that ESPN will be providing to the cable systems in those markets the ability to use ESPN2 as a channel to replace ABC. Viewers in those markets should be able to see the entire race by simply going to the ESPN2 channel.

In Houston, that TV market is big enough for the ABC local station to have a second channel available on the cable dial and over the air. That is called a digital tier station.

This is a solid plan from the ESPN/ABC group designed to make the NASCAR race easily available to viewers in the affected markets.

The big finale Saturday night puts Rusty Wallace in the Infield Pit Studio with Brad Daugherty. These two get pretty fired-up about this race, so host Nicole Briscoe may have her hands full at 7PM for thirty minutes.

It is going to be a joy to have Allen Bestwick on the race call. After years of sub-par announcing of this event, ESPN has given Bestwick an opportunity to get this coverage back on the right track. One gets the feeling Jarrett and Petree are ready to help.

Sunday features the return of Dave Despain from an Alaska motorcycle trip to Wind Tunnel at 9PM on SPEED. Prior to that program the usual SpeedCenter and Victory Lane shows air. It's still amazing that SPEED cannot figure out doing Victory Lane live after the race would be a home run with fans.

So, set the DVR for Wednesday and get ready for some early racing this week. Keep an eye on the weather forecast as well to see what happens with Hurricane Irene and potential landfall on Saturday morning. We'll keep you posted.

Happy to have your comments on these topics, just click the comments button below.

Post-Race TV Wrap: Sprint Cup Series From MIS on ESPN

Rain was a worry, but luckily the weather stayed good and the ESPN coverage of the Sprint Cup Series race from MIS went off without a hitch.

Nicole Briscoe hosted the coverage from the Infield Pit Studio. Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty were the analysts who joined her. ESPN college football analyst Desmond Howard stopped by after giving the command to start engines. The college football talk was interrupted by racing.

Allen Bestwick, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree handled the race from the TV booth. This was an MIS script that all three of them knew very well. Bestwick did his best to concentrate on keeping viewers up to date on who was where and why.

Jarrett and Petree were again saddled with a fuel mileage and track position event without major incidents except for engine woes. Both of them understood the issues and talked clearly about what teams could make what decisions to keep themselves in contention. You just had the feeling for them it was a long day.

Speaking of long days, the ESPN pit road reporters were struggling for some reason. It's a big track and there were several caution periods that made for group stops, but it was still a rough race. The booth dominated the commentary and there were almost no crew chief interviews, unlike the last race.

Tim Brewer has now been upstaged in the pre-race show by ESPN's own Sports Science features that have now been adapted to NASCAR. This really steals Brewer's thunder and makes his subsequent reports seem rather basic.

ESPN made good pictures and sound. The director crept back toward his tendency to frame camera shots tight and lose the larger perspective. On a big track like MIS, that was tough. ESPN has a good split-screen effect, but it was rarely used for green flag racing.

In the end, NASCAR may have been guilty of providing some early cautions for minor debris and was rewarded with a late caution that bunched the field for the finish. It was a storyline that TV viewers had seen before.

Once again, ESPN framed the finish so the lead lap cars could be seen crossing the line as the graphics revealed the finishing order. It wasn't perfect, but at least the cars could be seen. Kind of a fitting way to end a rather mediocre telecast.

This post will serve to host your comments on the ESPN coverage of the Sprint Cup Series race from MIS. To add your opinion, just click on the comments button below.