Column

NBC's coverage is the pits (but that's good)

By JOHN C. COTEY
Published July 1, 2005

Palm Harbor resident and NBC pit reporter Bill Weber was so good replacing Allen Bestwick in the booth last year when Bestwick got hurt playing hockey and had to miss two races, producer Sam Flood came up with an idea:

Let's put him there full time.

That might be the most noticeable change as NBC and TNT take over NASCAR coverage this week for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

TNT will air a Race for the Chase preview at 4p.m. today, followed by live coverage of pole qualifying from Daytona at 4:30p.m. and the Busch race at 8p.m. Saturday's race on NBC airs at 7p.m.

Bestwick is happy to be in the pits for 2005. It could be worse - ABC took race caller Paul Page off the Indy 500 coverage, and now he'll be working ESPN's hot dog eating contest Monday - and in fact maybe couldn't be better.

With NBC planning a closer look at the performances of the pit crews, Bestwick will have a chance to shine.

"I'm expecting to have fun," Bestwick said.

The timing is certainly good. While NBC didn't announce any grand overhaul of coverage, it did say it will treat pit stops like a fourth-down play in football, putting Bestwick in a crucial position.

"After a pit stop happens, we'll go back and do a replay, just like you go back and do a replay at the end of a fourth-down play, and figure out what went wrong at the line of scrimmage - or what went right," Flood said. "Three-tenths of a second can move a car from fifth to first getting off of pit road, and they can hold that lead and win the race. It can really determine the winner of a race, and ultimately the championship."

NBC will use a "Pit Window," showing the pit stop in slow motion while continuing to focus on live racing. Flood's plan is to break down pit stops like never before, from a dropped lugnut to the speed of a crew member getting over the wall while carrying a tire, with analysts Benny Parsons and Wally Dallenbach breaking it down, often with a telestrator.

"It really is amazing the athletes that go across the wall and change the tires and put fuel in these cars," Parsons said. "It used to be a guy at the gas station did it. Not anymore, they're all athletes. We need to point out just how quick the tire changers are or how long it takes the jackman to get back around the car."

Done right (read: don't be too mundane), NBC has a chance to attract a new breed of fan and distinguish itself from Fox's coverage, which concluded a very successful first half in which ratings at its last race at Sonoma were up 21 percent from last year and seven races set record-high ratings.

Matching those numbers won't be easy, especially if Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. aren't in the title picture the last 10 races. But shuffling the Weber/Bestwick deck and emphasizing the pit crews - who many feel don't get the credit they deserve - might be enough of a tweak to keep the coverage fresh.

It sure beats adding another box or graphic to an ever-shrinking screen.

"You can go out there every week and cover the race the way people expect, or go out and cover the race and raise people's expectations," Weber said, "and that's exactly what we plan to do."

[Last modified July 1, 2005, 01:24:21]