Burton, Letarte go from behind the wheel to behind the mic with Allen
RELATED: Jarrett, Petty, Voda put fans in pre-race show driver’s seat
Nearly a decade ago, Jeff Burton was capturing the pole for the Daytona 500, the first of four that came his way in 2006, and winning at Dover while driving for Richard Childress Racing.
Steve Letarte was helping lead four-time champion Jeff Gordon to victories at Sonoma and Chicago and a sixth-place finish in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup in his first full-time season as crew chief for Hendrick Motorsports‘ No. 24 team.
Rick Allen was being Rick Allen, which means he was in the television booth, leading the broadcast team for what was then the Craftsman Truck Series and which was televised by Speed TV network. The series had made its way onto the larger tracks of NASCAR, but there was still a place for a Mansfield, a Milwaukee, a Memphis and, goodness yes, an Indianapolis Raceway Park.
Next week, the three men will be together in the broadcast booth at Daytona International Speedway as NBC marks its return to NASCAR.
The Coke Zero 400, scheduled for Sunday, July 5 (7:45, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM), will kick off 20 weeks of Sprint Cup Series coverage by the network, which last aired live coverage of the series in ’06.
For Allen, the transition from covering the Truck Series, which he was a part of from ’03 through 2014, has been a smooth one.
It’s been a bit more of a change for Burton, who only recently stepped out of the car after more than two decades of competition that saw him win 21 times and finish 10th or better in points on eight occasions.
The same holds true for Letarte as the former crew chief headed for the TV booth after a successful stint as crew chief for two of the sport’s biggest stars in Gordon and more recently Dale Earnhardt Jr.
"I think what makes this broadcast different is the two guys that will be up in the booth with me," Allen told NASCAR.com. "The fact that I can pose questions or I can talk to two guys who just got out of their roles of being a Daytona 500 champion crew chief and a guy who has been behind the wheel of this car …less than a year ago. …
"They’ve had their fingers on the pulse of the crew chiefs and drivers that are in the garage. I think that is going to make it different for me … they are hands-on, the most relevant people in this sport that are able to come over and do television broadcasting. For me, that’s very exciting."
Now that he and Letarte no longer are immersed in the sport 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Burton said the challenge becomes staying current on what’s going on, how changes impact teams and the series in general, as well as conveying what he sees take place during each race.
RELATED: Burton, Letarte analyze Gordon’s last full-time season
"You do that through your relationships; you do that through years of being involved in the sport, you build relationships with people," said Burton, who earned 27 wins in the XFINITY Series in addition to his Sprint Cup success.
"I have to build relationships with drivers and continue the relationships I had in order to stay informed. Because we owe it to the people we are talking about; we owe it to the people we’re talking to, to know what we’re talking about.
"When we don’t then it’s time for someone else to do it.
"We’ve spent a great deal of time in that conversation — staying relevant and staying factual. Making sure that our opinions are based on all of the information. I think that’s what is so important. When you see something, it happens right now; you don’t have time to step back … you’ve got to make a call right now. … So the more information we have, the better information we can bring to the viewer and the better we can represent the people that were involved. Whether they were at fault or not or whatever, we still need that information so that our judgment is as good as it can be."
Letarte said he has worked hard to "re-brand myself" so that he is seen as an NBC analyst and not a 20-year HMS employee, something he says has begun to change as he’s attended races and met with teams both at and away from the race track.
The success of Greg Ives, who took over as Earnhardt Jr.’s crew chief, has helped speed up that transition.
RELATED: Dale Jr. says Letarte will be ‘really good’ in booth
"When they see me, I don’t think they see me as a crew chief anymore, I think they do see me as an analyst," Letarte said. "I think that’s needed, it’s required. And I think I have the respect of the garage because of my years as a crew chief. …
"I’m not retired. I changed professions. So our relevancy, that’s my job, that’s what I do now. Because I cover 20 races and not 36 doesn’t mean I try less or don’t put as much effort into it. It means it doesn’t take up quite as many hours as my old profession just because we cover (fewer) races. But once we start in July, I expect that the hours that we need to put in and the effort we have to put in during the week to be relevant is going to be there. And I think that’s really our No. 1 challenge, to make sure that we stay that way. And I have all the confidence in the world going to Daytona we will."
The trio, along with others who will make up NBC’s NASCAR effort, recently went through coverage of a mock race at the Quicken Loans 400 at Michigan International Speedway.
Sneak Preview of our NEW @NASCAR broadcast logos & gfx that can be seen July 4th weekend at @DISupdates #NASCARonNBC https://t.co/aVsPIjsvws
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) June 16, 2015
"It educated us on a lot of things we need to work on and it gave us an idea of what kind of chemistry was needed, what kind of tempo was needed for these broadcasts," Allen said of the MIS effort. "It went really well.
"We’ve been around each other doing studio shows (‘NASCAR America,’ weeknights, 5 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network); personally we’ve been away from the race track and just spent time together. I think what Michigan did was it told us really how we need to be during a broadcast. How we need to react off of each other, listen to each other and just rely on each other’s skills.
"That’s one of the most exciting things about this team is we have some very, very talented people that are great communicators and are great storytellers."
Burton said looking at what others have done, or currently do, will have no bearing on how the NBC group will approach each week’s events.
"All of the networks that cover racing and have covered racing put a lot of effort into it; they each bring it in a certain way," he said. "It’s not our goal to look at what they did right or what did they do wrong. It’s our goal just to look at ourselves and say, ‘How do we want to do it?’ "
That each comes from separate areas of the sport will enable the group to bring something different to the table.
"What we’ve learned is I see it a little different than Jeff, and Rick sees it a little different from us," said Letarte. "I’m a crew chief’s crew chief and I watch it from a crew chief’s angle. I’ll probably never completely get out of that, that’s how I’ve been trained my whole life. I see all these different storylines from the strategy and the cars and the pits … Burton sees different storylines as a driver would see them; and the Rick brings the TV view to it.
"That’s the beauty. We can sit around and talk about the race because the three of us watch the same race three uniquely different ways. It makes it fun to do; I learn a lot when I listen to Jeff talk about racing even though I’ve been in it for 20 years.
"We watch the races very differently, which is great."
