Denny Hamlin is never shy about sharing his opinions. And when it came to NASCAR’s most recent race at Watkins Glen, a few of his favorite targets came merging together.
Hamlin has spoken out before about his lack of affinity for road course racing and improvements NASCAR and its broadcasters can make at televising races. Both of those came into effect this week with the series at the famed road course at Watkins Glen.
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On his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin was critical of Fox and NASCAR missing too much of the dramatic action on the track and blamed the lack of people and track workers paying attention to what’s happening at all times.
“The thing I don’t love about road courses and watching road courses is as a fan I can see only 1/10th of the track at one time,” Hamlin said. “They didn’t follow a few wrecks that happened. That was for sure. NASCAR has to get better with that. There’s absolutely no excuse. You have cameras pointing in every direction of this race track. For you not to see Cody Ware destroyed in that final corner, holy cow man.”
“They just don’t have the track workers that they used to have. It can’t just be one person. I’m sorry, you can’t look at 24 monitors at one time. There has to be multiple people looking for dramatic events that’s going on that could be a hazard. You can’t just like, ‘oh we didn’t see that.”
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Incredibly, the Cody Ware accident that Hamlin spoke of late in the race at Watkins Glen didn’t just not get covered on the television broadcast. It didn’t bring out a caution flag either. When you see his impact with the wall, you wonder how that is possible.
Road course racing is a very different animal than ovals. Instead of the racing action being confined in a neat geometric loop, the action can span several square miles. It’s like the difference in broadcasting a basketball game versus broadcasting a golf tournament. You’re never going to catch everything live that you should with the cars so spread out over the track.
Having said that, it’s reasonable to expect replays of big crashes and events, even if they don’t bring out a yellow flag. Fox has cameras all over the racetrack at every turn. And clearly someone, whether from Fox, NASCAR, or both, should have caught this one. NASCAR fans have been critical of Fox broadcasts this year and missing an incident this big is only going to sew the seeds of discord even deeper.
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The post Denny Hamlin critical of NASCAR on Fox broadcast: ‘There’s absolutely no excuse’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.
