By Mark Spoor, Turner Sports Interactive
August 7, 2003
12:34 PM EDT (1634 GMT)
More than ever, safety is a hot-button topic in NASCAR. On Sunday, it'll be the focus of a special report on the prerace show leading up to the Sirius at The Glen.
Wally Dallenbach headed to Toronto recently to compare the safety crew for CART against NASCAR's safety crews with respect to how quickly the crews respond to an accident on the track.
The main difference between NASCAR and most other forms of motorsports is that CART, IRL, the NHRA and others have a safety crew that travels with them from race to race while NASCAR uses different crews at each racetrack.
Another major difference -- as has been brought out considerably in recent weeks -- is that in NASCAR, drivers are racing back to the caution while many other circuits freeze the field during a caution.
How do those differences affect how quickly a crew can get to an injured driver? The issue was brought to the forefront at last year's Pepsi 400 when Dale Jarrett defiantly walked alongside the ambulance after a 14-car accident at Daytona.
"I stood around and I walked around and I walked halfway back to my pit before an ambulance ever came," Jarrett said after the accident, "so if they can't get them any sooner than that, to hell with them."
Has anything changed since then? Dallenbach will explore that topic on Sunday.
Tough decisions: The talk of last weekend's Brickyard 400 was Dale Jarrett running into crewmember John Bryan near the entrance of Pit Road. Anyone who was watching the broadcast would tell you it was a scary sight.
The fact that Jarrett carries an in-car camera made for a dicey decision for NBC/TNT NASCAR producer Sam Flood. Do you show the incident from that close an angle?
Flood said he had to have the answer to one very important question first.
"We had to know that John was awake and alive before we would show something like that," Flood said. "After we had the interview where (crew chief) Shawn Parker said he was awake and alert, we could show it."
On that subject, a tip of the hat goes to Marty Snider for some heads-up reporting. Snider got great quotes from Parker and was able to grab a part of Bryan's helmet that was broken off during the incident. That really drove home how hard a hit Bryan took.
Scary stuff.
BP in the pits: Speaking of Bryan, he'll be the subject of this week's "Benny and the Pits" segment during the prerace show.
This should be a one-question segment: "So John, tell us about last Sunday."
Back to you, Bill.
Ask The Producer: Not surprisingly, we got several e-mails with questions for our "Ask The Producer" segment. The vast majority had to do with the number of commercials during recent NASCAR broadcast.
Here's the story, as told by an NBC producer.
Advertisers pay the network to have their spots run somewhere between the command to start engines and the checkered flag. Those spots have to be run during that time. Every effort is made to run the spots while the race is under caution. However, if there is an incident on the track during a commercial, the network has and will continue to cut away as long as it's a network break and not a "station break" when local commercials are shown.
In fact, according to a study done by motorsportstv.com, there has actually been a decrease in commercials by both FOX and NBC/TNT from 2002 to this year.
According to the study, the FOX broadcast averaged 15 minutes and 32 seconds of commercials per hour in 2002. This year, the average shrinks to 14:43.
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On the NBC/TNT side, the average went from 15:40 in 2002 to 15:12 this season.
By comparison, in 2000 -- before the big television contract, ESPN averaged 14:03, TNN averaged 15:51 and TBS averaged 15:34.
I looked it up, so you didn't have to.
But feel free.
Each week, we'll pick one question to ask to the producer of the NBC/TNT telecast. Why did they do things this way? Why did they talk to that driver? Any question that eats at you could be answered right here in the Viewer's Guide.
Send your questions to the e-mail box in this piece.
On to this weekend's schedule...
Site: Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Track: Watkins Glen International (2.45-mile road course, 11 turns, banking goes from 6-10 degrees in turns. Length of pit road stretch: 2,141 feet. Length of backstretch: 1,839 feet.)
 | Last year |  | Stewart holds off his challengers in the final laps
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|  | Dale Earnhardt Jr. slides into the gravel pit
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|  | Matt Kenseth brings out the first caution of the day
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Race distance: 90 laps, 220.5 miles
TV: Bud Pole Qualifying: SPEED, 3:05 p.m. ET Friday. Happy Hour: SPEED, 11 a.m. ET Saturday. Race: NBC, 1 p.m. ET Sunday.
Last year: Tony Stewart took the lead for the final time by passing Ryan Newman with 18 laps remaining and ended an emotional week with a win.
Last race: Stewart dominated, but over the course of 400 miles, Kevin Harvick had the best car. The RCR driver scored the biggest win of his career on Sunday as he won at Indianapolis by pulling away after a restart with 10 laps to go.
Potential storyline: Eight NASCAR Winston Cup Series cars -- two from each manufacturer -- were involved in an extensive wind-tunnel test on Tuesday at a facility in Marietta, Ga. The following cars were obtained for the test following Sunday's Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway: No. 20 Chevrolet of Tony Stewart; No. 24 Chevrolet of Jeff Gordon; No. 38 Ford of Elliott Sadler; No. 17 Ford of Matt Kenseth; No. 42 Dodge of Jamie McMurray; No. 2 Dodge of Rusty Wallace; No. 32 Pontiac of Ricky Craven; and No. 10 Pontiac of Johnny Benson.
"The focus of this test is for the '04 season and has nothing to do with the competition this season," said NASCAR Winston Cup Series director John Darby. "We're going to get a snapshot of where everyone is today and also conduct some preliminary testing in spoiler reduction."
Point to ponder: Ricky Rudd has accumulated 25 modern era road course top-five finishes, best among all drivers.
Next race: GFS Marketplace 400, Michigan International Speedway, Aug. 17
Site: Lebanon, Tenn.
Track: Nashville Superspeedway (1.333-mile oval, 14-degree banking in turns, 9-degree banking on frontstretch, 5-degree banking in backstretch. Length of Frontstretch: 2,494 feet. Length of backstretch: 2,203 feet.)
Race distance: 150 laps, 199.95 miles
TV: Race: SPEED, 9 p.m. ET Friday.
Last year: Mike Bliss blew by Ted Musgrave on a restart with 10 laps to go, and then fended off a furious charge from Rick Crawford and Musgrave on a green-white-checker restart to win.
| Last year |  | Bliss does the victory dance in Nashville
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|  | Bliss wins the last-lap battle to the checkered flag
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|  | Jason Leffler suffers more hard luck early
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Last week: Carl Edwards stretched his fuel to the very end Friday to win the Power Stroke Diesel 200 at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Travis Kvapil regained the points lead with a second-place finish.
Potential storyline: While it's been 16 races since a series race has been won from the Bud Pole (David Starr, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Oct. 13, 2002), this week's event could be the streak-breaker. Both previous winners at Nashville Superspeedway -- Scott Riggs and Bliss -- started from the pole.
Point to ponder: The Federated Auto Parts 200 will be the eighth series race to be held in the Music City. Dennis Setzer is the only driver among seven previous winners entered in this year's event.
Next race: O'Reilly 200, Bristol Motor Speedway, Aug. 20.
Mark Spoor is an associate producer of NASCAR.com. His Domino's Viewer's Guide appears each Thursday.
The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.
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