Quick Las Vegas takeaways: Fox absolutely whiffs on Busch-Logano incident
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• Everyone watching Sunday’s race at Las Vegas knew there’d be some sort of confrontation between Kyle Busch and Joey Logano after the two made contact in the final corner on the last lap.
OK, everyone watching except for those working for Fox.
Busch, whose car had slid down pit road in the aftermath of the incident, was visibly fuming after he exited his car. Instead of keeping the feed shown to viewers across the United States trained on him waiting for Logano to come down pit road, Fox started showing clips of race-winner Martin Truex Jr. and his team celebrating.
In nearly any other instance, the emotions of the race-winning team are paramount. Not in this one.
But as Busch fumed and took off in a brisk walk down pit road in the direction of Logano and his parked car, Fox kept showing Truex. Fox showed him do burnouts, a staple of every post-race celebration. Fox showed Truex get out of the car and attempt to retrieve the checkered flag from the flagstand. Again, another fairly routine action for a winner.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone watching at home, Busch had walked up to Logano and landed a punch with his right fist. A fight that was minutes in the making was happening and no one at home had any idea.
By the time Fox cut anticlimactically to the tussle between Busch and Logano’s team, Busch was already on the ground in a headlock, six seconds after he quite predictably punched Logano.
The broadcast network pays billions for the television rights to NASCAR races. Yet the best coverage came from former USA Today reporter Jeff Gluck, who left the outlet before the start of the 2017 season to run his own crowdfunded motorsports journalism website. Gluck, whose video you can see above, followed Busch to Logano’s car. Just like Fox should have done.
Truex’s comeback from his tumultuous exit from Michael Waltrip Racing, a terrible first year at Furniture Row Racing and the inspiration of his girlfriend Sherry Pollex’s bout with cancer are great stories. But in a NASCAR searching for rivalries and mainstream exposure amidst sagging television ratings, Truex doesn’t move the needle for casual fans. Right or wrong, fights do. This one THAT EVERY NASCAR FAN SAW COMING fits that bill.
Fox knows this. Its internet NASCAR coverage can be the epitome of clickbait. And the network has been broadcasting NASCAR since 2001. The mistake in missing the buildup and start of the biggest story of the young NASCAR season so far can’t be chalked up to ignorance or unfamiliarity.
And that’s what makes the lack of coverage so grating. Fox can do so much better. But it somehow doesn’t. There have been multiple times already this season — including on Sunday — where Fox announcers Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon and Darrell Waltrip have exclaimed about a crash while the video feed is on something else entirely before finally switching over to what the announcing booth is talking about.
NASCAR fans and the new fans NASCAR is hoping to attract deserve better television coverage than what they’ve been getting so far. And with Fox on the docket for four more months, it’s going to be a long wait for that better coverage if these first races are a barometer of what’s to come.
• Assigning blame for the incident on the track is a futile exercise. Don’t attempt to do it. Busch attempted to pinch Logano down entering turn 3 as the two went to the inside of Brad Keselowski and his wounded car.
But Busch carried too much speed into the corner and washed up the track. Seizing the opening, Logano drove to the inside of Busch but his car didn’t stick on the inside line. He washed up, making contact with Busch and, well, you know what happened next.
This would have been foolish if the incident happened on lap 60 of the 267-lap race. In fact, Logano showed some stark pragmatism around that point earlier in the day when he checked up on the backstretch after Jamie McMurray slid in front of him after a restart. Had Logano not gotten out of the gas, the entire field could have been crashed.
But this was the last lap. Heck, it was the final two corners of the final lap. It’s exactly when drivers are supposed to drive as hard as possible for every position. While we understand Busch’s anger, it can also be frustrating to see unnecessary fights like these. They’re fodder for pageviews and attention, but they really don’t do much else.
• Kevin Harvick was unhappy with the speed of the safety team’s response to his crash early in Sunday’s race. Harvick blew a tire on the frontstretch and his car slammed into the wall.
“[The tire] started vibrating about four or five laps there before it blew out, and I was just trying to ride it to the end of the stage there. Obviously, it didn’t make it. The worst part was the medical response. It took them forever to get to the car. I thought we made that better, but obviously we haven’t.”
• Harvick entered Sunday’s race as the points leader. He’s not any longer thanks to that crash. The new honors go to Keselowski, who finished fifth despite a broken part that caused him to give up the lead late in the race. Keselowski has 132 points in NASCAR’s new standings, one more than Kyle Larson.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
