Daytona Review, TV Contract Opinions, Auto Club Return Preview, and More | Chasing The Cup S1:E4

In this episode of Chasing the Cup, the host discusses the top three races from the past weekend, including the Daytona 500. Austin Cindric wins the Daytona 500, and there were other races in the Xfinity and Truck series. The host also talks about the TV coverage of the race and criticizes Fox for their technical difficulties and excessive commercials. They discuss the future of NASCAR's TV contract and suggest focusing on streaming and network television. The host also provides updates on news stories, including Bush Light's Accelerate Her program and the confiscation of wheels from Penske and RFK. They also mention contract extensions, upcoming races at Auto Club Speedway, and make their picks for the races. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Cup. I am your host, Will England, and in this episode, I'm going to be going over the three top series races from this past weekend, including the Daytona 500. I'll also discuss what I think about the current TV contract and what I want to see from the next TV contract. I'll also go over the news, and I'm going to preview NASCAR's return to the Auto Club Speedway. But first, the Daytona 500 wrapped up last night, so let's review it. 23-year-old Austin Sendrick, the rookie, wins the Daytona 500, but I won't call it an upset just yet. He barely ekes the win out from Bubba Wallace, who finishes second. Chase Briscoe finished third. Ryan Blaney finished fourth. Eric Amorola, in his last Daytona 500 start, finishes fifth. Kyle Busch finishes sixth. Michael McDowell finishes seventh. David Reagan finishes eighth. The dominant car of the day, Brad Kaspersky, has to settle for a ninth place finish. And rounding out the top ten, a driver who struggled all day but rallied for a top ten finish, Chase Elliott finishes tenth. If you want to see the other results down the 27th, then you can go to NASCAR.com and take a look at the results. During the race, we had some mini big ones, so I'm going to go over who was involved in those. Rick Eastonhouse Jr. finished 28th. Eric Jones finished 29th. Kevin Harvick finishes 30th. Noah Gregson, 31st. Tyler Larson, 32nd. Todd Gilliland, 33rd. Christopher Bell, 34th. Tyler Reddick, 35th. Greg Biffle, 36th. Denny Hamlin, 37th. William Byron, 38th. Harrison Burton, 39th. And finishing in dead last is Ross Justine, in 40th. And so there were some worries of how the race would be. In my opinion, it was alright. It was some pretty good super speedway racing. It's not as good as it was with the Gen 6 last year. I think this is probably one of the best 500s we've had in a while. Not sure if it's one of the greatest of all time just yet, but it's definitely going to be one that we'll remember with the introduction of the new car. It'll be known for its good racing. Next, we have the Xfinity race. The beef is Westford Dinner 300, and your winner is Austin Hill, the rookie, in the 21 car. Next was AJ Almdinger, who finished second. Noah Grigson, finished third. Riley Hurst, finished fourth. Justin Allgaier, finished fifth. Sheldon Creed, finished sixth. Anthony Alfredo, finished seventh. Ryan Sieg, finished eighth. Josh Balicki, finished ninth. And Brandon Brown, finished his tenth. And the Xfinity race was pretty good. The race was known for Mayot Snyder's blowover on the back straightaway. It was okay, but debris went flying everywhere into the motorhomes that are parked on the back straightaway, which belong to many of the rich guys, including team owner Michael Jordan. There's actually a picture of one of the pieces of the car in the grill of Michael Jordan's, I believe. I'm not sure if it's MJ's or not. And so, that was a pretty solid race. Maybe the best race for the weekend, in my opinion. And finally, you have the next era NGD50, which was the truck race. Zane Smith won his new ride, the number 38. Your champion, Ben Rhodes, finished second. Christian Ekis, finished third. Tara Gray, finished fourth. Parker Kligerman, finished fifth. Jesse Little, finished sixth. Ty Majewski, finished seventh. Danny Bone, finished eighth. Carson Hosavar, finished ninth. And Matt DiBenedetto, in his first truck start, finished tenth. Now, one thing to note is that a lot of competitive teams on the super speedway didn't make the show, including my pick, Jordan Anderson. And so, that's pretty sad to see that he didn't get to make the show. I hope that doesn't affect his points with that team. But that race was kind of lackluster. I'm not sure if it's because of the new bodies or not. But it was kind of lackluster compared to the two other series. Because usually, these races are so chaotic. But most of the time, everyone was single file in the truck race. And there were only two big races. Usually, you would go into like fourth overtime at these truck fight races. So, it was kind of a dud in my opinion. But it was still okay. So that's it for the Daytona review. Now, let's go to what many people criticized Fox yesterday for, which was their TV coverage. One thing people didn't like about the Daytona 500 was Fox's coverage. Fox seemed to have a lot of technical difficulties. Like missing wrecks and stuff like that, as well as some technical glitches. But the one thing most people complained about was the amount of commercials that Fox had sold that were all full screen. And many people have criticized Fox for this. Because it seems like Fox is trying to get their money's worth. And it looks like they're not saying no to putting limits on commercials. Fox will just run commercials whenever they want. Even if they're getting super racy and the big one's about to happen soon. They'll just go to commercials, it seems like, for many people. Meanwhile, compared to NBC, NBC in most cases has less full screen commercials. But it seems to primarily focus more on side by side action. Meanwhile, Fox focuses more on full screen and occasional side by side. And I mean, full screen commercials are okay when no one's doing anything on the track. Like they're all single file, or the caution's out, or the stage just ended, or the race just finished and you just gave your winner an interview. But if you go and put full screen commercials in the middle of the action, you're going to get criticized and many people will get to miss the action. So that's not what I like about Fox. But it seems like it's one of only their two downsides, which is that their coverage isn't that good and they run a ton of full screen commercials. But still not as bad, in my opinion, as NBC. And this is how I like Fox more than NBC. Because NBC may care about how the broadcast looks, they do not want to show it, it seems like, on their main network. And I think it's because of the priorities that NBC has. Fox seems to care more about entertainment on Sundays. And so, if NASCAR's taking up another program's time slot, then they can just move that other program that NASCAR's taking over and they'll just set it aside. All because Fox needs the ad time. Meanwhile, NBC may seem to focus more on politics and news. And NASCAR, at least in the day races, have their time slots right in front of NBC Nightly News on Sunday at 6. And that seems to be their primary focus. Not with racing and other sports, but with news and politics. Probably because that's their biggest money maker. So if NASCAR's about to go over into the news' time slot, NBC will not have it. They'll just put NASCAR on cable, they'll just broadcast the news like usual. And this really started with ESPN and the last contract. When NASCAR would go over its time slot, and they have another sport coming on, they'll just put NASCAR from either ABC or ESPN, and put it like on ESPN2, or even ESPN News. And I don't think ESPN had the priorities for NASCAR, because they had so much other sports they had to do, like their monopoly over college sports. And I think NBC has other priorities for their politics and news. They gotta keep on defending one of the most hated people in the world right now. And it looks like, although many people say that Fox will drop, I think Fox will stay. Because they seem to care more about the sport, instead of NBC as a whole. Because I think Fox's big money maker is NASCAR and other sports. You know, NBC, their biggest money maker is politics and news. So I don't think there's a place for NASCAR to be on NBC in the future. So I think NBC will drop NASCAR after the current TV deal. Because NBC has had to deal with NASCAR right before their biggest priority. So with the next TV contract, I'm not sure who would take that spot. ESPN will have even more of a monopoly over college sports in 2024. I mean, CBS is losing their college programming, but they still have contracts with the NFL in the PGA Tour. So I don't really know where this could go. So I guess it'll be where NASCAR can fit on network television. Because of the decline of cable, I think NASCAR will push more for network television and try to get away from cable because it is slowly dying. And I'd say streaming will also be a factor in this new TV deal. I'm not sure about the networks that will broadcast. I'd say one thing NASCAR should do is focus on streaming. Whether a free stream of all network races or maybe paid ones for cable or exclusive streaming races. But NASCAR needs to focus on the long term. They need to see what the future of sports broadcasting will be. And these TV providers need to do that as well. With that out of the way, let's get to the news. The first thing I'll talk about is an update to one of the big stories I talked about last week, which was Bush Light's Accelerate Her program. I got further information about that last week after I recorded that podcast. And I learned that it's for all female drivers over 21. Which makes a lot more sense that Jennifer Jo Cobb is part of it. Because at first NASCAR posted that it was for the next generation of young female drivers. And I was kind of confused when Jennifer Jo Cobb was part of that list, as well as a few others in my opinion. And also, a little extension to that story, part of Fox's broadcast was the Bush ads with these drivers. And these were for Bush's sweepstakes with Kevin Harvick. But the segments on TV had some of the drivers of the Accelerate Her program. The first one that I saw was Jennifer Jo Cobb. I then saw Brittany Zamora. And then probably the most memeable of the bunch was Amber Balkins. Because Amber Balkins came right on, right as Tyler Reddick got turned around. And they played part of it before cutting back to that mini big one that took out some of the contenders. And many people think that this is going to be kind of like Formula 1's Lance Stroll meme. So I'm glad to see these drivers also get in some TV spotlight. And I hope this helps lead to more funding. But I hope that's not all Bush wanted from these drivers, which was the use of them for advertising. The second piece of news is that wheels from Penske and RFK were confiscated after the dual races last week. Because I believe NASCAR said that the teams were drilling in extra holes. The teams said that it was trying to resolve a safety thing. And there's no performance benefits. But NASCAR will post any finds later. Probably after I get done here. And maybe I'll show up later this week while I'm editing. And so if there are any finds, I'll include it in next week's episode. On the morning of the Daytona 500, Hendrick Motorsports announced that they signed a five year extension for Chase Elliott, which now leads to 2027. That's good for Hendrick and Elliott because this means that Hendrick will keep one of the top talents in NASCAR in their stable. After racing their way into the Daytona 500 last week, Greg Biffle began talks with NY Racing about running more races this year. So this is good for that team. I hope they do make some more attempts with Greg Biffle. And I'm going to do another quick update for one of the news stories last week. And that Ty Gibbs has confirmed his full time status. And he ran the 54 last week. That will be his full time number. Next Midland will headline the Coder Pre-Race Show. They are a Grammy Award nominated band that hails from Tripping Springs, Texas. And they'll perform a concert prior to the race. Eminence is getting fans a chance to be featured on Kyle Busch's car. For those interested, the sweepstakes is open for entries until August 25th. And so your name will be put on Kyle Busch's car during one of the races in the playoff. And so if you want to do that, you may want to do it as soon as possible. And that's it for the news this week. Although I'm doing the news a little early, there's not much stories. Probably because of the 500. But I'd say I'll have a lot more news stories to cover next week. So now NASCAR returns to Auto Club. And I'm going to preview that and give you my picks. This weekend's race at Auto Club for the Xfinity Series is the Protection Alliance 300. It'll be on Saturday, February 26th at 5pm. You can catch the race on Fox Sports 1 and MRN. For my pick, I'm going to go with AJ Amaninger. AJ Amaninger was one of the fastest at the Intermediates last year. I think he'll be one of the dominant cars during this race. Now the cup race is the Wise Power 400. It'll be on Sunday, February 27th. It'll be at 3.30pm. And you can catch it on Fox. I'm going to go ahead and look at the weather. On Sunday in Fontana, there'll be some sunshine with some clouds mixed in with a high of 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds north and northeast at 8mph with 0% chance of rain. So it looks like it'll be a good sunny with a little bit of clouds. Probably will give you a little bit of shade which is probably good to combat that hot California sun. It may not be super hot in the cockpits of the cars. And so my pick for that race is the most dominant car from last year, Kyle Larson. Kyle Larson has won at Auto Club before with Chip Ganessi Racing. At Auto Club's big sister, Michigan. And so I think Kyle Larson will definitely be one of the biggest contenders in that race. But who knows who'll be the dominant car this year. Whether it be Hendrick or Larson. We'll just have to see. But anyway, that's it for this week. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please leave a like and subscribe for more. And if you're going out to Fontana this weekend, I hope you have a great time. And if you're not, have a good time wherever you are. I'll see you next week.