Welcome back to the Critic's Annex, where additional races are critiqued. While the Sprint Cup Series was racing at Watkins Glen International, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship was racing at Road America on FOX Sports 1. The race was pretty decent, but how did FOX Sports cover it?
Unfortunately, the race fell victim to those dreaded scheduling issues that everyone hates. The USGA Women's Amateur Golf Championship 36 hole final that directly preceded the race broadcast went long. As a result, the first half-hour of the broadcast aired on FOX Sports 2. We've talked about the disadvantages of FOX Sports 2 multiple times in the past. Needless to say, its not ideal, but I know why FOX Sports did it.
30 minutes into the race, the race moved back to FOX Sports 1. In that time, viewers who don't have FOX Sports 2 missed the No. 70 Mazda going behind the wall (according to the official IMSA pit notes, they broke an oil pump after only six laps) and an early caution due to the No. 26 of Don Yount going off the road.
For how much IMSA is apparently paying for their coverage on FOX Sports (part of the money that manufacturers have to contribute each year goes towards their TV deal), I don't really think IMSA is completely pleased with what airs on television. When they started posting race broadcasts to YouTube, they would post the FOX Sports broadcasts. Now, they post the livestreams with commentary from IMSA Radio (at most races, that means you get commentary from John Hindhaugh and Jeremy West). Admittedly, that move was likely based on input from subscribers to
IMSA's official YouTube page (of which, I am one of them), but it is telling.
Part of the reason for that is rather blatant errors, like when Mark Kvamme crashed his Starworks Motorsport No. 88 at turn 3 at the same time as one of the BAR1 Motorsport entries stopped out on course. The FOX Sports broadcast made it look like the two cars were one and the same. That's wrong, dudes. Even with the camera angles we got, I could tell that they were the same car. Ryan Eversley could tell as well and
called the broadcast out for screwing up.
I can't tell the commentators to look out the window for a couple of reasons here (They're not on-site and even if they were, Road America's huge). No replays were shown, so they never actually corrected their mistake.
Another instance saw FOX Sports 1 cut away from the leaders' pit stops to show a full-screen interview with Chevrolet Motorsports Vice President Jim Campbell. While Campbell is an important figure in sports car racing thanks to Corvette Racing's success, the race is not about his butt cheeks. That definitely could have waited.
Back on Monday, the sports car racing pace lap of the week covered the final five minutes of the race. For me, this was the most exciting portion of the race. FOX Sports clearly knew where the action was and stuck with it...for the most part. The GT Le Mans contenders were all over each other after the final restart and we saw everything. I'm honestly surprised that Tristan Nunez didn't get some kind of post-race penalty for spinning out Risi Competizione's Toni Vilander in the last couple of laps.
As for the GT Daytona battle, I suppose that was just as great. However, I really don't know because we didn't see any of it. Weak sauce. I can tell you that Jeroen Bleekemolen held off the pack to take the win and that the top 7 finishers were within six seconds of the lead at the finish. FOX Sports should have used some kind of a split-screen setup after the final restart in order to show off that action.
Post-race coverage was somewhat typical. Viewers got interviews with the class winners. The exception to this rule was an interview with second-place GT Le Mans finisher Richard Westbrook, who was right in the middle of the late-race scrum noted above. There was also a check of the unofficial results before FOX Sports left the air.
Overall, the action was good, but the presentation was lacking. While I like Justin Bell, his little features break up the flow of the broadcast. They honestly need to go. Shove them on the IMSA YouTube page along with the ride-along laps. I say this despite the fact that having the Michelin mascot out on the track like that was rather humorous.
The sad truth is the broadcast presentation is probably hurting the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at this point. The races are great. The tracks are great. Saw a picture on Twitter last week that showed a sign recommending great places for viewing and taking pictures. That's excellent. Need more of that. The broadcasts, which were cut down in scope this year in some kind of a cost-cutting move, have hurt a little. I knew going in that it wasn't going to be great, and in some aspects (pit road coverage), its a little better than I thought it was going to be. With less dudes around to help the broadcasts, they're suffering.
"It was crazy. It was so fast. I remember talking to Paul Tracy, a couple other guys, Tony Kanaan, and it was like ‘My god, can you see something or not?’ And they were like ‘No, man I can’t see.’
Paul Tracy told me he was just looking at the dash and almost crashed because I was already in the corner. Never in my life had I been around Texas and the track felt like there was no straightaway. We averaged in qualifying, I think it was 230 mph, we qualified outside pole. I remember that lap, I was wide open all the way around and couldn’t see a thing inside the car. I got loose in [Turns] 3 and 4 and the car got sideways [describes with his hands] and it came back to me. It was just luck because I was not quick enough to catch it.
By the time we got to race, they said, ‘No, no we cannot do that.’ We’re pulling more than seven G-forces combined." - Patrick Carpentier, on the weekend of the 2001 Firestone Firehawk 600 at Texas Motor Speedway, which was cancelled due to G-Forces. Here's a clip of what qualifying was like from Adrian Fernandez's car. Also, Carpentier qualified at over 233 mph for the race.
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