Welcome back to the Critic's Annex, where additional races are critiqued. Last weekned's action at Pocono Raceway was a tripleheader with the Pennsylvania 400 being the headliner. Prior to Saturday's edition of Wrecks 'r' Us, the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards raced on Friday night. This race was interesting.
Similar to the Sioux Chief PowerPEX 200 at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis that we critiqued last week, the duo of Ray Dunlap and Phil Parsons were in the booth. Heather DeBeaux returned to her role as the second pit reporter (that she had in Iowa), joining regular pit reporter Jim Tretow. I generally like DeBeaux as a pit reporter and its pretty clear to me that the teams in the K&N Pro Series West are happy that she's the regular pit reporter for their tape-delayed race broadcasts. When Derek Pernesiglio turned up to work the K&N West race at Stateline Speedway in Idaho last month,
all the teams were asking him where DeBeaux was.
Prior to the race, FOX Sports 1 aired a General Tire driver profile of Will Kimmel, a man who seems to have something less than zero luck these days. Kimmel talked about his family's racing origins (which date back to 1949) and Kimmel Racing. Honestly, not a whole lot there about Will. Maybe that's the way he likes it. Regardless, it was kind of thin.
Before we get into the race critique itself, the Grand Marshal (William Mann, Vice President of Motorsports for ModSpace) added in an out-of-place "Go Trump!" to his command to start engines. I don't particularly care what your political affiliation is, Mr. Mann, but that was inappropriate. Don't do that here. Besides the fact that it was inappropriate, you're representing ModSpace. I'm pretty sure they're not fans of your move either.
The big story on Friday evening was the pit road incident that saw Gus Dean hit two of his crewmen after losing his brakes. The two men went flying. At the time I saw this, I thought Pedro Martinez (tire carrier) would have been more seriously hurt since he did a complete flip in the air before coming down. He would have been, had he landed on his head, which was very much in play. Instead, it was Jackman Jon House who took the brunt of the hit.
FOX Sports 1 chose to wait on replays until they knew that both crewmen were up and walking. Martinez apparently got up fairly quickly and walked away under his own power. House was stabilized on his back before a neck brace and brought in. Given the backboard, it appears that the plan was to load House onto a stretcher. However, House later walked to the ambulance with assistance.
As for the replays, they were ugly. Not in production values, but the content. Ouch, that hurts. The shot from Dean's in-car was excellent in showing how his car simply refused to stop. The head injuries to House are concerning to me. It's like he suffered the same injuries that he would have if he weren't wearing a helmet.
The actual race coverage was pretty good. There was a fair amount of racing for position out there amongst the frontrunners and that action was covered. I do feel like there really wasn't much action shown below about 12th or so. Then again, there were only 28 starters Friday and a number of those teams were uncompetitive/start-and-parkers. There's only so much action to go around.
Also, ARCA does seem to have a pretty lenient view when it comes to starts. The aforementioned Will Kimmel blatantly jumped the start, yet was not penalized because he gave the spots back. That would have been a pass-through in NASCAR regardless. The booth called Kimmel out for his jump start, which seemed
Post-race coverage was a little above average for ARCA races on FOX Sports 1. Viewers were provided with four post-race driver interviews, winning crew chief Chad Bryant. and checks of the unofficial results before they left the air.
Overall, I enjoyed the race, but the field cannot do much with Chase Briscoe right now. He's like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder. Once he started winning, not much can stop him. The pack will have another chance this weekend in Berlin, but its not going to be easy.