Sunday was the first of six Sprint Cup Series races on TNT. The new music theme was "TNT" from AC/DC.
Lindsay Czarniak, Larry McReynolds and Kyle Petty started the show from the infield stage. The pre-race show contained a mix of features, live interviews and a discussion among the analysts.
Weather was threatening and hit on the pace laps. The race was red flagged and Czarniak and McReynolds moved to an indoor studio location that TNT would not disclose. They hosted the rain delay, despite experiencing an audio problem for several minutes.
The pit reporters were Ralph Sheheen, Marty Snider, Matt Yocum and Phil Parsons. These four arranged a lot of interviews with drivers and TNT mixed them with several features that were repeated, including "Wally's World" during the rain delay.
Once things got underway, it was Adam Alexander, Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach Jr. in the booth. This was the first outing for Alexander in this role. Alexander was calm in his approach, but kept the facts straight and did a good job of directing traffic.
Petty and Dallenbach had an on-going conversation. These two kept things upbeat, despite the fact that the race had long stretches with limited passing and few storylines. The booth did not mention the "start and park" cars. Before the restart with XX laps to go, the trio in the booth came back on camera for a recap.
TNT worked the pit reporters, but also offered a dedicated pit reporter (Jim Noble) for online viewers watching RaceBuddy at the NASCAR.com website. This four camera feed with some added features is a TNT creation and will be on all six races.
The network continues to add some additional graphics like plylons that mark pit out and other areas of the track. There was only one graphics crawl on the screen and it stayed consistent for the race. Additional graphics highlighted individual cars with live information.
This is a great opportunity for you to tell us how you liked the TNT coverage and the RaceBuddy application. To add your comment, just click on the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting.
After this very long day, thank you for taking the time to stop by The Daly Planet with your comments.
