Who knew it was going to come down to this? First, the trucks are going to race under the lights on Friday. Then, the Nationwide Series sets the stage with a day race on Saturday. Finally, the big showdown between three top Sprint Cup Series drivers for the championship with everyone else running all out just to win the race.
It's going to be important to get Friday started right. ESPN's TV team is up first with Cup practice at 11:30AM on ESPN2. The late Thursday truck series practice got rained out, so the trucks have the track in the hour prior to this telecast. That should make pre-production a bit noisy.
SPEED is up at 1PM for Nationwide Series practice. Steve Byrnes flew down to anchor this coverage after coming off the road for several months to anchor the new one-hour Race Hub show. Kudos to Wendy Venturini who is working at a reporter for SPEED this weekend despite being in the late stages of her first pregnancy. She and Bob Dillner are the reporters for SPEED.
At 2:20PM it's going to be interesting. Both ESPN2 and SPEED are live. Over on ESPN2, Allen Bestwick hosts NASCAR Now. Meanwhile, it's John Roberts from the SPEED Stage hosting NASCAR Live. Tough choice these days with both shows being solid and offering essentially the same information.
3PM is the big Cup Series qualifying show on ESPN2. Very important to qualify well in this race for the top three championship teams. Avoiding a start at the back could be avoiding potential disaster. ESPN will have Marty Reid, Dale Jarrett, Andy Petree and a cast of thousands on this program.
At 5PM the truck series team for SPEED will call qualifying. Rick Allen, Michael Waltrip and Phil Parsons have been a steady presence all season long. at 6PM Roberts comes back with another edition of NASCAR Live and at 6:30PM Byrnes will wind-up his day with Nationwide Series final practice.
We will live blog the truck series race Friday night on a new post. This will serve to host your comments on all the daytime TV on ESPN2 and SPEED on Friday. It should be fun to watch. To add your opinion, just click the comments button below. This is a family-friendly website, please keep that in mind when posting. Thanks for stopping by!
