What was unusual was what amounted to cheering for Kligerman and the outright pimping of the hoodie sweatshirt stuff. In this role, Kligerman also discussed topics such as the fierce racing further down the order that really doesn’t get a lot of press. Why not make use of your colleague in such a fashion? It’s nothing that they haven’t done with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s singular Xfinity starts the past couple of years. To that end, NBCSN had a helmet cam in Kligerman’s car and made use of Kligerman as an in-race reporter. Sunday also saw Parker Kligerman make his first Cup start since the 2019 AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. I just don’t care enough about the playoffs to want to deal with that. That said, it still can be very difficult to see where people are running with the constant point standings updates at nearly all times. That made me very happy as this was not a playoff-dominated broadcast. The non-playoff contenders were also right up in the hunt as well.
With more action on tap than in Texas, NBCSN had a decent amount of content to show. I hope they did return, especially knowing that the Grand Prix was done around the time the final stage started. The ongoing issues with NASCAR’s high-downforce rules on intermediate tracks over the past couple of years have really soured a lot of longtime fans. But that might have been all it took for fans to not come back. Thankfully, the delay Sunday in Kansas was quite brief.
Given that another infamous incident occurred earlier in the TNT broadcast that night, that could have played a role as well. The result was that hundreds of thousands of people changed the channel to see the taped show on USA instead of the live show on TNT. 4, 1999, WCW gave away the results of a tape-delayed WWF Monday Night RAW where Mick Foley won the WWF Championship during a live broadcast of WCW Monday Night Nitro on TNT (the fight had occurred six nights earlier).
Simply put, this could end up being a different version of one of the most infamous moments of the Monday Night Wars in pro wrestling.
Knowing that the race started about 14 minutes after the Formula 1 race, then almost immediately got red-flagged due to lightning, I do fear that a lot of people changed the channel from the NASCAR Cup Series race and didn’t come back. After a fairly unsatisfactory race at Texas Motor Speedway, viewers got a much more enjoyable race to watch Sunday (Oct.