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Was a marked contrast between the booth tonight and the booth for the Xfinity race last night.

Tonight was dour. dry and boring with no enthusiasm. I guess Mike Joy has always been a chill guy and it was DW or Gordon that was the energy ball bouncing around and Mike went with it
Without that kinda person in the booth, he's just calmly relaying facts and not getting over excited about someone off camera having a minor accident compared to the guy we can see on camera having a monster of an accident...(dunno what that could be referring to tho....)

The Xfinity guys were enjoying themselves, excited, entertaining and got the points across they needed to (was one of them Logano? ) and yeah, was light night and day, interest wise.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

clean air >> tyres

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No doubt racing has been a step up this year, but they still need about 200 more Horsepower to make them the true beasts of the ovals their marketing department portrays them as...

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I saw loads of passing and position changes relative to the old package. But don't let me interrupt your low-effort snark thing.

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Yesterday was Ryan Blaney, Logano, and what's his annoying face. I don't mind excitement in the booth, but when Logano is in it he's ALWAYS in a good mood and laughing, laughing, laughing. Sometimes you want em to just stfu and stop trying to superficially create hype. Then you have today and it's just kinda the opposite. There's a decent mix between the two somewhere. Today was a bit more laid back than usual, though imho.

Commentating aside, glad to see a decent finish without 5 restart attempts for stupid spins.

That's because the two tyres lot had fresh tyres and the four tyres lot didn't

He just wants to hate everything doesn't he?

Yeah, this race doesn't deserve the snark. It was good, just that the first two stages dragged the race out much longer than it had any business of doing.

Gibbs got screwed in that last caution, but that's the way it goes.

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Ducks Angels Sounders Spurs

First Denny, now Kyle. Gibbs boys really got it out for Bowman.

Busch had 4 tyres the others had 2 and he couldn't close up even though they were running side by side. The aero problems are still there but are better than previous years.

A 20 lap run and he would have got them.

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I started thinking how the racing today was a lot like the Gen-4 races and then Clint said the same thing at least twice during the broadcast. This is definitely good; it's a lot more about driving than engineering now. Drivers are able to run side by side for many laps without getting sucked around like with the old car and Xfinity and trucks. The battle between Kyle Busch and Truex was fantastic, I thought. Truex didn't seem to have an overwhelming advantage over Kyle like you needed to have in the past in order to even think about passing someone at these tracks. He was able to stay close and keep trying to find his way around Kyle, and almost did. With just about 100 more horsepower, it'd be perfect.

And of course, when it's about driving, you're sometimes going to have someone break away if the cars behind them race two and three wide. That's gonna happen sometimes. It's not a bad thing; it's natural.

this car is miles ahead better. Needs improvements, but is still way better

now we just need to see racing at road courses

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

More like
Track position for just 2 fucking laps > Obviously Better > Any other crap you trow at it.

Busch also got trapped side-by-side with another car for a long time on that restart and couldn't use the full racetrack. I'm sure that didn't help him any.

did you guys know The Biff was in the race

I had no idea that Biffle was back. Didn't seem to be doing too badly (assuming that the 44 is not a top team).

Watched the highlights and there is definitely an improvement with the side by side racing. It still looks tricky to drive up to the back of another car (saw a few cars get loose when they lost clean air in the corners). Interesting to see several drivers losing control by themselves as well. Other thoughts:

- Stage racing still sucks. I really cringed when somebody 'won' a stage and the commentator said 'his fifth career stage win!', as if it's something amazing they now keep count of. Ugh. At least with the highlights you don't have to sit and watch an unnecessarily long caution period for no reason.
- I didn't mind Danica in the booth She has some knowledge of the cars and was able to give a decent, articulate analysis of things that were happening.
- I was just waiting for some lame finish where Bowman's car got loose on the bottom and the car on top comfortably goes on to win. Pleasantly surprised to see two laps of side by side racing. Early days with this package. I don't think it's going to be as good as the Gen 4, but it's heading in the right direction. Looking forward to seeing how it races on other styles of track.

I felt like there were several times where she gave good insight and explained things well that the average person would have missed. However, she does not have the right vibe for being in the booth, her chemistry with her partners just wasn't there and she can come off a bit flat and lacking charisma, so most of the time I was actually annoyed by her being in the booth. Maybe she'd be well suited to a role where she can chime in on occasion but isn't part of the main booth team.

This has been the case for every commentator so far this season though, it seems Mike Joy's energy level is based on who he has in there with him and whoever it's been this year, it's been dragging the whole commentary level down a tad
There's no doubt these drivers are big names and know their stuff, but it takes the right kind of person to communicate that knowledge with clarity and enthusiasm to keep the average viewer entertained

Hopefully they'll keep trying out names (and they'll only go for NAMES first) until they get it right again
Or just go with the Nationwide guys as I said, that race was a lot more fun due to the enthusiasm from the booth

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley