ESPN's Punch excited about return to the track

INDIANAPOLIS -- Like a penniless kid staring hungrily in the window of a candy store, Dr. Jerry Punch has spent the past seven years watching NASCAR from an uncomfortable distance.

On Sunday, Punch and the rest of the ESPN broadcast team get to finally satisfy their sweet tooths with the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, the first time ESPN will broadcast a Nextel Cup race, ending a seven-year hiatus for the cable network. Even though ESPN has handled 20 Busch Series races this season, Punch said doing NASCAR's premier series at a track with as much history and tradition as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway makes for a special weekend, indeed.

ESPN is back

Dr. Jerry Punch, Rusty Wallace and Andy Petree will call Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard for ESPN, which will broadcast a Cup race for the first time since 2000.

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"We don't want to try to re-invent the wheel," Punch said Friday as he prepared for Sunday's show. "The other television partners have done a very, very nice job with their coverage.

"I think what ESPN did best in the early years with the people who did our coverage ... was we told the stories. We did racing for the race fans. We were there to serve the viewer. And it wasn't about us, it was about what was happening on the racetrack. We weren't there to be the show, we were there to cover the show."

After Jerry Nadeau took the checkered flag in the season-finale at Atlanta, ESPN packed up its trucks and disappeared from NASCAR. At the time, Punch was a top-notch pit reporter.

"I have a memory that I want to go away, and after seven years, it's almost gone," Punch said. "That was the last day we were in Atlanta in 2000, and I've never prayed for rain at a racetrack before, but I prayed for rain that weekend because I wanted it to last. I also wanted rain to hide the tears that we all had."

But this weekend, Punch -- since promoted to the anchor chair -- and the rest of the ESPN broadcast team, which includes NASCAR champion driver Rusty Wallace and crew chief Andy Petree, return with a renewed sense of purpose. They'll have a lot of technology and manpower at their disposal -- including 85 cameras and the debut of "Draft Track," purported to show viewers how airflow affects cars on the track.

But Punch said all the new bells and whistles won't detract from his primary focus -- which is telling the story.

"What we want to do is we want to put faces in those helmets, we want to tell people the great stories," Punch said. "It's those things that I think ESPN does so well. Let's give fans something that we picked up in the garage area, that Andy may have picked up from a crew chief or Rusty from a driver or owner that maybe they won't get anywhere else.

"The telecast is the entree. We're just the salt and the pepper, we're just the spice. If we can do that, we can give the fans what ESPN is known for."

While other networks handled race coverage, Punch was busy learning a new skill: working football and basketball games from the press box as the lead announcer.

"When we lost the NASCAR contract in 2000, ESPN was kind enough to give me a chance to go do play-by-play," he said. "I had a taste of how much work that is and how many people are talking to you in your ear. When I went to do college football on ESPN, I was a play-by-play guy. When I went to do college basketball, it helped me try to develop a rhythm."

Punch said the job may look easy at home, but it's not.

"A lot of people are talking to you at one time in your ear," Punch said. "There's a lot of things happening. ... It is a lot of work. People think you just show up and talk. There's a tremendous amount of work but we have an incredible support staff."

With that in mind, Punch said his primary responsibility is to keep an even keel, no matter what's happening on the track.

"I think the key is I have to set the tone," he said. "In the pits, I can get charged up and pumped and excited and come across with all kinds of energy with these pit stops.

"But up there, I have to help set the tone so that we've got the Energizer Bunny over here to my right [Wallace] and the poised, composed, analytical crew chief here to my left [Petree] and I've got to be sort of in between.

"I feel like that we're sitting in the living room with families and we're all watching the same race. And these families want me to ask these guys -- the experts -- what they want to know. They want me to ask them the right questions at the right time. Let's pull out of them what's happening on the racetrack from their perspective."