I’ll be honest; I missed the Pepsi 400 this past Saturday night because I went to an Il Divo concert. I missed out on my favorite sport to watch four men in shiny suits sing in languages I don’t understand to a bunch of middle-aged married women. They sounded great, and I did get the tickets for free, so I really can’t complain. 🙂 (Side note: if you’re single and looking for a man, don’t go to an Il Divo concert, it’ll do you no good unless you’re into gay men)
I Tivo’d the race to watch on Sunday morning, but it’s not the same. Some leftovers are good the next day, not so much when it comes to racing. I tried to start from the beginning and just watch it as it happened, but it was just so easy to skip to the end. Racing must be watched live. It’s too easy to speed through the green flag runs and get to the crashes. It’s too easy to fast forward through Chris Myers‘ inane banter with Jeff Hammond; you have to suffer through it in order to enjoy the entire show. It feels like cheating if you don’t.
This weekend the race at Chicagoland Speedway begins the NBC/TNT, ending FOX/FX, coverage of NASCAR. I’m sad that I won’t hear Darrell Waltrip (aka DW) yell “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity!, Let’s go racin’!” at the beginning of each race and Larry McReynolds was really growing on me this year. I used to enjoy NBC’s telecast because of Allen Bestwick as the play-by-play announcer, but then something really weird and annoying happened. They moved Bestwick down to the pits as a reporter and moved Bill Weber into the booth with ex-drivers turned analysts Wally Dallenbach and Benny Parsons. I don’t like Weber, he doesn’t strike me as being very confident. I think Bestwick held his own against Benny Parsons in terms of knowledge of the sport, and he’s got a great voice. Speaking of Benny, he kind of irks me too. I tend to not agree with his opinions of NASCAR’s latest rulings, whereas with DW I’m usually in agreement. But on the bright side I always enjoy Dallenbach, he’s much more relaxed.
