2024 NASCAR Cup Series Race Twelve Kansas

Cars in field: 38
Pole: Christopher Bell (20)
Outside Pole: Ross Chastain (1)
Stages: 80-85-102
Weather: Cloudy, 59°F, Feels like: 58°, Wind E 4 mph, Gusts 6 mph

It’s raining in Kansas at the track during the Race Day pre-race broadcast. The start of the race is delayed.

MRN reports at 1730 eastern the cars are being uncovered. The drivers have been called to their cars.

Jimmie Johnson (84) gives the command to start engines from inside the car. The race will be starting more than three hours after the scheduled time.

The jet dryers are drying pit road as the cars circle in warm-up laps.

Dinner interrupted my seeing stages one and two.

Chris Buescher (17) wins stage two.

Restarting on lap 173 of 267 with Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch on the front row. Chris Buescher penalized for his team over the wall too soon.

Caution on lap 174 of 267 for a crashing involving Corey LaJoie (7), Jimmie Johnson (84), and Austin Hill (33). Flames were seen under the hood of Jimmie’s car as it spun into the infield. Jimmie checked up when he saw smoke coming from Darrell ‘Bubba’ Wallace’s 23 car. Corey LaJoie (7) slammed into Johnson’s bumper sending Jimmie spinning into the outside wall then spinning down into the infield. Johnson quickly exited the car.

Restarting on lap 183 of 267 with Kyle Larson (5) and Kyle Busch (8) again leading them to the green.

Caution on lap 184 of 267 for a crash involving Michael McDowell, Austin Cindric, Darrell ‘Bubba’ Wallace (23)

‘Desperate’ Denny Hamlin (11) slid up into Christopher ‘CBell’ Bell (20) who slid up into Austin Cindric (2), who hit the outside wall then spun down and clipped Bubba Wallace (23) and tagged Michael McDowell (34) sending him spinning.

Restarting on lap 190 of 267 with Kyle Busch (8) and Kyle Larson (5) followed by Martin ‘MTJ’ Truex Jr (19).

Caution on lap 191 of 267 for a spin by Harrison Burton (21).

Television was showing one of those idiotic shots that was mostly the passenger side window-frame of a car and the door of another car, and the outside wall. Basically nothing visually interesting, and nothing really related to the actual on-track action. Meanwhile there’s a car spinning and they don’t have a decent shot of the incident. If they used cameras and camera operators outside the car, they could quickly change to the action and maybe occasionally we would see the best images. Experienced camera operators, familiar with the sport, should be able to capture the best video in their area, giving the person in the broadcast truck switching the broadcast the opportunity to show the best racing action.

Restarting on lap 197 of 267 with Kyle Busch (8), Kyle Larson, and Martin Truex Jr (19) up front.

Caution on lap 197 of 267 for a spin by Joey Logano (22).

Joey was trying to get the car moving. We were stuck with an in-car camera shot so all we could see was the post inside the car and the passenger side and lots of smoke outside the car, and him moving the steering wheel and the car shaking, but couldn’t really tell what was going on. They really need to give those in-car cameras a break. They’re rarely interesting.

Eventually Logano’s car is hooked up to a wrecker for a tow back to pit road. For reasons beyond me we are continually seeing the wrecker towing cars, from inside the car. Totally a waste of broadcast time. We’re looking at meat on a grill with a set of tongs turning a piece of it, before the grill cover is replaced. The television folks are very bored today. Maybe if they were interested in NASCAR racing, they might find the racing action worthy of proper coverage.

Restarting on lap 205 of 267 with Todd Gilliland (38) and ‘Desperate’ Denny Hamlin (11) followed by Chris Buescher (17), Justin Haley (51), Darrell ‘Bubba’ Wallace (23), Michael McDowell (34), and Kyle Busch (8).

Once they string out single-file, they mostly stay single-file.

With 10 laps to go MTJ (19) is making a run toward the front passing second-place Chris Buescher (17) on lap 257 of 267.

Caution on lap 260 of 267 for a spin by Kyle Busch (8). It looked like the back-end just came around on him. There were no other cars around him at the time.

MRN claims it has been hard racing since the drop of the green flag. Alex Hayden specifically said, “they’ve been getting at it since the drop of the green flag”. That left me asking why hasn’t television been showing that race. We’ve seen a lot of idiot shots of the sides and bumpers of cars, and car interiors, and occasional single cars.

Restarting in overtime on lap 26 of 268 with ‘Desperate’ Denny Hamlin (11), Chris Buescher (17), Kyle Larson (5), Chase Elliott (9), Ryan Blaney (12), Noah Gragson (10), Alex Bowman (48), John Hunter ‘JHN’ Nemecheck (), Corey Heim (43), all of whom took two tires, and Martin Truex Jr (19) who took four tires.

White flag.

Chris Buescher (17) wins! Now they’re saying Kyle Larson (5) won. Initially they had Chris Buescher winning by 0.001 and then they changed it to say Kyle Larson won it by the same. They were racing hard coming to the line and Larson bumped Buescher twice. The second bump appears to be what gave him the edge at the line. That is such a fun finish to the race, but a disappointing result.

MRN says that finish was the closest in NASCAR history.

The difference between the leader and the top finishers – second place Chris Buescher (17) 0.001, third place Chase Elliott (9) 0.06, fourth place Martin Truex Jr. (19) 0.075, fifth place Denny Hamlin (11) 0.609.

Buescher said he covered what he could, but left too much space on the top side.

Larson said he was trying to cut his run and doored him. He said he wished they could’ve had more laps.

Martin Truex Jr (19) said, “one more lap and they would’ve looked like a hero”. when asked about the four tire strategy call on the final restart that resulted in him coming out of the pits in ninth position.

MRN’s Alex Hayden said, “The transponder is in the right rear corner of the race car. Former crew-chief Todd Gordon responded that the transponder is further back on the car, 14 ft and 6 inches. Gordon said, “The receiver for the transponder is same distance from the front of the car as the distance between the lines at the finish line”. With such a close finish NASCAR gets the transponder data, then looks at the video of the finish to determine the winner.

NASCAR then looked at the photo of the two cars crossing the line to make sure they have the right winner and changed the winner from Chris Buescher to Kyle Larson.

The overtime restart was exciting. I would like to see a race with 20-30 laps like that. I am disappointed by the finish, because I’m a Chris Buescher fan. There was apparently on-track action throughout, but the television broadcast spent so much time showing anything but racing action the race looked pretty boring on television. At least they followed the leaders for the finish. The shot was such you couldn’t really see how close the others were, but at least you could see the finish – though I couldn’t see the moment they crossed the line. The camera-work needs drastic improvement. The FOX broadcasts used to be the best, with excellent camera-work, a stellar broadcast booth, awesome pre-race shows, and just terrific coverage overall. Now it is almost on-par with the NBC broadcast. The booth is better, though Bowyer talks too much and seemingly gets on Kevin Harvick’s nerves as much as he does mine. Their sniping is a little much though and tends to make me mute the broadcast. That said they’re still vastly better than the incessant babble of the NBC booth. At least the television audio is often listenable for Cup races; dependent on the booth configuration for the Xfinity series races, and tolerable when Jamie Little isn’t around for the Truck series races. The NBC booth is almost tolerable if Steve Letarte isn’t there and if Dale Earnhardt Jr is in the Hollywood Hotel or whatever they call the pit box and if Burton is playing pit reporter. Basically there are too many people who talk too much and say the same things in that booth. Rick Allen barely gets a word in and he’s the person who learned the most about calling a race in his time at FOXSports with Phil Parsons in the Truck series booth. The others are drivers without broadcast training or natural ability. Dale Jr seems to want to do the job, so he may one day become a good broadcaster. Burton seems to want to be a color guy and if he had the opportunity to work one-on-one with Rick Allen that might happen. Steve Letarte should go back to working as a crew-chief or something with Hendrick. He does not need to be anywhere someone else needs to occasionally speak. The video of racing action is about the same on both FOX and NBC – missing. Both networks spend more time showing bored fans in the stands, people playing games in the infield, car interiors, the track surface, the outside wall passing, bumpers of cars, hoods of cars, doors of cars, shots of people driving, people in the pit-box watching the race, and the race from the blimp. They show some of the worst video of a NASCAR event, but great video of sunsets, and moonlight nights. They just can’t manage to show an exciting race and if often feels as though they simply don’t understand what’s exciting. Occasionally I find myself yelling at the television because I catch a glimpse of something interesting occurring on-track at the edge of a useless camera-shot. Every once in a while they have a replay of the incident, more often than not they end up with a ludicrous shot from so far away you can’t ascertain what happened. If I had the money and the time I would go to every race. Since I’m unable to do so I wish there was a way for me to see the racing action without the worthless video.

I very much enjoyed the overtime restart and run. The third stage was okay. The incidents that occurred were only shown in replays since we were stuck with awful in-car video during the incident. The races weren’t great this weekend, but they weren’t as bad as some of the recent Kansas races.

Get caught up on the latest racing news.

Motorsport News:

Next Race: Darlington

GO Legacy Motor Club 84 & Hendrick 48 & 9!!!!