TV Times - Speed To Bring 22 Days Of Pre-Season Testing
by Lou Modestino ~ December 30th, 2007 @ 1:21 pm. Filed under: TV Times. 2,147 readsSPEED will be setting up shop in Daytona, Charlotte, Las Vegas and Fontana to bring NASCAR fans 22 days of testing coverage as part of NASCAR Preseason Thunder beginning Jan. 7. Testing coverage will be comprehensive as SPEED will cover sessions for the Sprint Cup Series, the Nationwide Series and the Craftsman Truck Series. In addition, for the first time, SPEED will offer multiple shows from the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Media Tour, hosted by Lowe’s Motor Speedway. The full NASCAR on SPEED on-air team will participate in the 30-minute shows throughout the month, both on-site and from the Charlotte-based SPEED studios. Following coverage of NASCAR Preseason Thunder, SPEED will make the much-anticipated move to HD for 100 hours of coverage from Daytona Speedweeks beginning Feb. 7. In addition, SPEEDtv.com will re-launch in widescreen format Feb. 6. This came from SPEED’s PR office and the Jayski.com webpage.
From the SpeedTV network comes this news item. SPEED and FOX Sports will offer 17 hours of team coverage from the 46th running of the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona on Jan. 26-27, with the first 90 minutes of the event simulcast on the 1,400-square foot News Astrovision by Panasonic Screen prominently located at One Times Square in New York . This event is the opening motorsports race in the 2008 racing season that will begin then and not end until mid-November with not many weekends off. Only Easter Sunday and Mother’s Day will give the NASCAR teams a day off. Unless there are raindates and those days will have to be used as make-up.
“The Rolex 24 has re-emerged as the event I fell in love with when I first covered it for television in the early ’80’s,” said SPEED/FOX Sports host Bob Varsha. “Back then, everyone, and I mean everyone, converged on Daytona in January to shake off the winter blues. Why that magic went away is a long story, but Grand-Am has recaptured it.
“The Rolex 24 driver lineup is a race fan’s dream, and the stock car and open-wheel boys and girls know this isn’t a cameo; the Rolex Series regulars are fast and know all the tricks in these cars,” Varsha added. “Sure, it’s a one-off for the visiting stars with no points to worry about, but everyone’s goal, series regular or hired gun, is to put a win in the Rolex 24 at Daytona on their resume. The new Pirelli tires are wicked fast, and while winning any 24-hour race is no weekend at the golf course, the Rolex is simply flat-out, all the time. The weather is always a factor, as are the long hours of darkness, and racing luck can send the biggest star home humbled. Just ask Tony Stewart. I can’t wait.”
Rolex 24 at Daytona broadcast schedule (all time ET and subject to change):
• Jan. 26, 1-2:30 p.m. - FOX (simulcast in Times Square )
• Jan. 26, 2:30-10 p.m. - SPEED
• Jan. 27, 6 a.m. - 2 p.m. - SPEED
Bob Varsha will be joined in the booth by former racers David Hobbs and Dorsey Schroeder, who will provide analysis, and Leigh Diffey, who will deliver play-by-play. Brian Till, Calvin Fish, Chris Neville and Andrew Marriott will be reporting from the Daytona pits.
SPEEDtv.com will offer exclusive insightful Rolex 24 at Daytona news and analysis from testing to the checkered flag, plus behind the scenes reports and driver blogs, photo galleries and more, updated throughout the event. The 15.5 hours of live coverage on SPEED is up two hours from 2007.
When the ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour debuts at the start of the 2008 season, television will be a part of the series package. The series will televise at least 10 of 18 events during the inaugural season of the ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour in 2008. Those broadcasts will be done by Carolinas Production Group Inc., which is owned and headed up by veteran broadcaster Rick Benjamin.
“We are going to televise what looks to be about 10 or 11 races for the Tour next season as part of the first year of a multi-year agreement,” said Benjamin, who was one of the lead broadcasters for the now-defunct ASA National Tour on TNN for several years. “We are going to be tape-delaying one-hour broadcasts of the events starting in March and going through November.
“I’m really excited about this whole deal. This is the ASA brand of racing that we all know and love, just a little different than some of us remember on TV being that these are Late Models and not the old National Tour cars. There is a lot of legacy there and we all love short track racing. I’m really excited that John Kee and the rest of the ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour officials had the confidence in me to do that. I think it will be a lot of fun. We will have a pit reporter. We will do what we can to go behind the scenes and do some creative things. We are going to try and do some different things than the way short track racing has been presented in the past. We want to personalize the drivers more and make it an entertaining show for the fans.”
While the final details of the agreement are still being ironed out, the fact that the series will be on television throughout the Southeast is something that is certain. And it is something that both Benjamin and ASA SAT officials believe will help draw some of the best racers to the series.
“We are syndicating the shows to sports channels regionally. We expect it to be in 20- to 30-million households from Washington DC to Florida over to Texas. It will be all over the Southeast. There is a big hunger for this type of thing on those regional sports stations. We think we have a winning formula there. Most of the time, the races will be seen about two weeks out from their race dates. We will let people know for sure through the website. “There is a whole generation of TV race fans that don’t go to the races very much or don’t go to their local short tracks. What we will try and do is let them know that there is a great show on Saturday night 20 miles from their house that they can go and see.”
The new ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour will debut for Super Late Models and Pro Late Models in 2008 with a 15-race schedule and three additional non-points events. The schedule begins with Mobile International Speedway Saturday, March 22nd. From there, the series will move to two Georgia tracks, Watermelon Capital Speedway and South Georgia Motorsports Park. The series will also visit several prominent short tracks, including former ASA competitor Mike Cope’s Bronson Motor Speedway, Hickory Motor Speedway, Senoia Speedway, Dillon Motor Speedway, Music City Motorplex, Concord Motorsport Park and Anderson Motor Speedway. ASA will also have one road course event, coming at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC. Watermelon Capital, Hickory and Concord will host two events each, with Concord holding the final point-paying event of the season.
With the caliber of tracks on the schedule, Benjamin knows that the series will help get back to the ASA days of old, and that the television coverage will only help. “We all know what the Robbins family built the history of ASA,” added Benjamin. “It was a place that built so many great drivers. And hopefully this year, we will be able to identify more drivers that are going to pick up some of that legacy and carry it on. We all know those guys will head to the top in a few years. I think we will find two or three guys that will move up and be part of the top three levels of NASCAR in the next few years. Then, we will find plenty of guys like Ronnie Sanders who has been racing Late Models for 30 years and that is what he wants to do. That is where it will be fun for me, which is trying to educate fans of this type of racing and make it fun and exciting.”
More announcements about the ASA Southeast Asphalt Tour will be released in the coming weeks. The series rules are already available for downloading at the series official website, www.asasoutheastasphalttour.com.
The series is not a Crate Late Model tour only. In fact, one thing the series’ officials want to make sure competitors know is that the ASA Southeast Tour will be open to a number of different engine/weight combinations, including crate, spec and built engines that utilize both two-barrel and four-barrel carburetors. This report came from various internet sources.
Now let’s check to see what’s happening on TV, for gearhead action, during this bleak off-season of winter. On Monday Speed airs the NHRA National held this past season from Bristol at 11 a.m. Tuesday has ESPN CL offering the ‘05 NHRA Southern Nationals from Atlanta at 11 a.m. For Wednesday it’s the SCCA Runoffs on Speed from Topeka starting at noon. Thursday’s hot pick is the Toyota Race of Legends from Laguna Seca on Speed at 1:30 p.m. while the Outdoor Channel airs FIM MotoX action at 8:30 p.m. Saturday offers a noon German Touring Car event from Italy on Speed followed by the Australian V8 race on Australia’s Gold Coast then the Tasmanian event for that series. For the Monster Truck crowd it’s 10 p.m. for the season opener from Anaheim, CA. Sunday’s hot pick is the start of the Dakar Rally airing on VS at 3 p.m. with a repeat at 6:30 p.m.(end)
NOTE: INFORMATION FOR THIS COLUMN CAME FROM VARIOUS REFERENCED SOURCES, PRESS RELEASES, NOTES AND OTHER SOURCES
