Last weekend’s win by Kyle Busch in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Loudon, NH, had some help by the network which brought it to television.
Speed televises all the Truck Series races and have had great ratings the entire year. In fact, last weekend’s Heluva Good! 200 from Loudon, New Hampshire, had a 40% increase in the Nielson Household Rating over this race last year. Fans have said they prefer Speed’s style of covering races over the other networks for various reasons, but mostly because of their no frills, bells and whistles approach.
The win Kyle Busch enjoyed last weekend should have seen the trophy given to Ray Dunlap for his help to Busch around lap 116. Busch had reported to his crew that his truck was starting to over heat. They (Busch and crew) were talking about the possibility of having to make an un-scheduled pit stop to figure out the cause of it over heating.
Hearing this transpire on the radio, Dunlap asked the announcers in the booth to have the cameras zoom in on the front of Busch’s number 51 truck to see if indeed it had some foreign object blocking the air from entering the grill, which is in most cases the over-heating problem.
The cameras did zoom in and did see a piece of plastic or tape that was covering the opening of the grill. On the radio, you could hear the crew say they could see it also and was planning on coming into the pits to remove the object. Busch was trying to find another race truck to pull up close to the rear of to help the vacuum between the two ’suck’ it off the grill. On lap 126 Busch came upon the truck driven by Norm Benning and there was enough suction to remove the object from his truck. Again, a tight shot revealed to everyone that the debris was in fact gone and the driver reported the water temp was going down.
If it weren’t for the tight camera shot of the front of the truck driven by Busch, he would have had to come into the pits, loosing a lap in the process, which would have produced a totally different outcome of the race. Busch didn’t pit until lap 172, so if he would have waited till then his truck would have expired.
All the teams on pit road have televisions on their pit boxes and monitor the race as seen by the fans at home as well. They can watch the race just as we do at home. So thanks to Ray Dunlap and Phil Parsons for helping Kyle Busch win yet again in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Next time guys, let this team figure out their problems on their own.
Car Classifieds
This is absurd! Teams have been taking advantage of camera angles for stuff like this ever since I started watching NASCAR consistently back in 2001. By writing an article like this you are showing that you don’t follow NASCAR very closely.
Taking advantage of camera angles is one thing, having a pit reporter to ask the booth to show tight shots so they can figure out what is wrong is another. Ray asked (on air) to show the front of the truck in a tight shot to see if any debris could be seen. If this had not taken place, Busch would have had to make a pit stop to find the problem. Then when the debris was shown, (for several laps) they were told it had blown off, again, keeping them from having to make a pit stop.
It is NOT the role of the networks to help with finding out what problems exist on track during a race. If it happens to already be on the tv screen, fine and good, but don’t ask for help.
You’ve only been watching NASCAR consistently since 2001 and are a NASCAR infant, keep watching and someday you’ll catch up to my years of following NASCAR. (You’ll need around 30 more to catch me)
Thanks for the comment Linda.
as hubby says, it’s some sort of love fest between the commentators and KB. so glad he is NOT in the chase!!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….UH…this is MOTORSPORT NEWS?????
Doubt if I’ll read any more articles from Motorsport.
Been watching NASCAR every since it’s been televised, that’s been done since the begining OLD HAT!
loosing a lap? Not trying to be a spelling Nazi but that’s my biggest pet peeve when people that are in to racing misspell that (in this case) or worse don’t understand the difference between lose and loose.
Webmaster’s note: In this case, it’s the editor’s fault (me) and not Steve’s. I’m supposed to catch errors like that.
Wake up – the announcers on every channel do the same thing. They focus in on a rear quarter panel to see if a tire is rubbing after a brush with the wall – or the grill (as above) or whatever part may be in doubt – and the affected team takes advantage of it. This has been going on for a long time, it just seems more obvious this year.
I’ll jump in here in Steve’s defense. All he was trying to say is it’s one thing if they just happen to have it on the tv screen and they see the grill covered, but it’s another to ask a pit reporter to zoom in so they can see what’s wrong with the car and then fix it w/out having to come into the pits. I think he’s right to bring this up in an article.
It could be that Speed did not care to see another KHI win this past weekend. Possibly Toyota paid a little extra for advertising last weekend and the network owed them one. Having a Casino as your sponsor can be lucky, especially when Cousin Vinnie and his buddy Guido get involved. Then again, considering that Ray Dunlap and Kyle Busch were involved, it could have been a romantic gift from Ray.
Iwonder exactly how Kyle cheated while winning his other 55 or so Nascar races….surely talent had absolutely nothing to do with. Ithink Speed should banned from covering Nascar from this moment forward. I can’t wait to hear Dr. Jerry Punch drone on and one during a truck series race or one of those super insight pit reports from Jamie Little.
The only reason little scrub got the assist is because he’s competitive pretty much week in, week out. Guaranteed the same thing happens every race to those outside the top 20, but they only get camera time when they bring out the caution for their overheating truck limping down the back stretch. Would the network assist them as well… doubt it. Follow the $$$.
I really doubt that they did that *specially* for KB. Michael Waltrip is a Toyota fanboy (as is DW) but this has been standard practice for years, on TV broadcasts. They showed a closeup of Crafton’s fender, I’m sure that his crew used that to see how bad it was.
lol @ Nascar infant. I’ve been a fan since my high school days before it was consistantly televised, I listened on the radio. I just became a “fanatic” after we lost Big E.
I have heard pit reports say many times that crews were requesting TV shots so that they could check out fenders, tires, etc. It used to be that your teammate or a buddy on track would have to drive up beside ya to scope out the damage. Now a days, they just ask one of their pit reporter friends to relay the message to the camera guys. I’ve heard that lots of times.
I’d comment if I could read it. Ads by Google in the middle of it, no way to close them. Tell Google where to put their ads
Webmaster note: Sorry for the Google ads, but they help pay the bills.
Is this the best you can do in the -anyone by Kyle Busch camp? We see the camera’s zoom in on the grills all the time we just don’t always hear the background to it, like if a team or reporter asks the cam dude to zoom in. Big deal.
Next time we see a cam shot of someone’s grill with junk on it I want to this same writer complaining about it.
Is there a bunch of rookies on here or do you just HAVE to have something to complain about concerning Kyle? The cameras have helped out drivers numerous times over the years and YES, sometimes they actually ASK the cameras to zoom in on the grill. Pretty lame trying to make it sound like ONLY Kyle gets the chance to do that. Every driver/crew chief can ask for that help.