NASCAR went to the TNT coverage for 6 races and I think they started off with a bang. Not to mention that their first NASCAR telecast of the year, they were able to telecast Tony Stewart’s first points win as an owner / driver.
The race being at Pocono, many don’t expect much from the race. It’s a big track and the long green flag runs can get tedious. In fact at one point a Kyle Busch fan or support twitter account said we can go out and mow our lawns now and come back for the finish.
What they didn’t take into account was TNT’s RaceBuddy.
RaceBuddy was the perfect compliment to the race and today’s event was a seemingly great success story.
On RaceBuddy, fans were able to vote in one driver that they would follow with an IN-CAR coverage all day long. Fans voted in Tony Stewart and we got to listen to the in-car all day if we wanted to.
Tony carries the checkered flag on RaceBuddy In-Car coverage
Racebuddy has several options in what you want to watch and their online broadcast was about 5 seconds faster than the telecast.
Just so you know, the IN-CAR broadcast IS NOT censored or edited, so parents, be wary. Tony was pretty calm all day but as he got closer to the end, as in the last 30 to 40 laps, he became “more spirited” in his conversations! You have to love the competitive spirit in these guys.
Listening to Tony Stewart, unedited, was pretty intense as they chatted about how they were probably going to be a few laps short on fuel. Hearing that killed me… I really wanted to see Tony get a points win.
Combining RaceBuddy with the double file restarts that NASCAR imposed starting this weekend, things were fun. I think double file restarts made it exciting. I used to love the very first lap of a race because I liked the double file starts as the field sorts itself out for those first few laps. Now we get that with every caution.
Stewart’s win, Racebuddy and doublefile restarts combined to make the televised race experience a more entertaining experience than I remember in recent history. And it drowned out the noise of Kyle Busch’s news from the night before with the Nashville trophy. But I couldn’t help but notice where Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished, regardless of being pleased for Tony’s accomplishment.
That and TNT had a leg up on some of the competition. I mean, with SPEEd’s coverage of the truck race, we didn’t even know that a number of trucks were out of the race, did we?
