Oilpressure

Now that I have sort of semi-retired from here, I can write about what I want to write about instead of what I’m supposed to write about. Today, I’d rather have a full discussion on the FOX telecast, than the usual discussion of Sunday’s race.

Yesterday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was fairly typical of that race – lots of buildup, followed by an opening-lap crash that then leads to lots of laps with little passing. When pit strategy and pit bobbles with the right rear tire are the bulk of your excitement for the day, you are a true race fan. It was a decent race by St. Petersburg standards, but it left me wanting more. To me, the story of the on-track action is that Scott Dixon finished second with no radio.

I always look forward to this race, however. It helps that it’s the season-opener. The scenery isn’t too bad either. It was about 38° in Nashville, when the green flag fell. It was a welcomed sight to see sunshine and the boats in the harbor. We have been to that race twice before, and had a blast both times. We hope to return some year soon.

With each season-opener, there is the anticipation of new teams, new liveries and new faces in different places. This year, all of the normal anticipation may have been completely overshadowed by the debut of FOX as the exclusive television partner to the NTT IndyCar Series. When NBC took over in 2019, there was no real debut. It was just a continuation of what we had experienced from NBCSN for years. Not since 2009, with the debut of Versus, had we experienced a whole new way of watching IndyCar. So we were all anxious to see how FOX was going to deliver our broadcasts.

After watching all practices, qualifying and the race on FOX, I think I have enough of a sample to make a judgment. Overall, I would give FOX a grade of B+; which I think is pretty good for their first outing. But things were far from perfect.

Probably my favorite thing was the infographic that was superimposed onto the halo of each car with an in-car camera. Trackside Online confirmed on Sunday morning what I had already wondered about. Most teams sell that halo real estate for sponsorship to be seen by television audiences. When FOX covers it up with their infographics, those paying for that space are not going to be pleased. I have an idea something will be worked out by Thermal in three weeks. But those graphics are really sharp looking, innovative and informative.

I also enjoyed the pit reporters. To have such short notice, Kevin Lee did a superb job with his IndyCar duties. He also served in the play-by-play role for the Indy NXT telecasts over the weekend. I understand some don’t care for Jamie Little, but I’ve always liked her. She hasn’t covered an IndyCar race since 2013, but her work was solid and seamless this weekend. It also occurred to me that it was 20 years ago, when she was covering IndyCar for ESPN. She has not aged a day since then. She looks the same. That’s nothing short of amazing, considering she turns 47 next month.

Jack Harvey made his debut behind the microphone as a pit reporter. Considering he was driving a car in the last IndyCar race back in September, I thought he did a decent job. He was a little on the stiff side (which should be considered normal, given it was his first time out), but he asked good questions in his interviews and he showed his humorous side in some of the practice shows. Overall, I was very pleased with the pit reporters. It will get even better after Georgia Henneberry joins the group after the Indianapolis 500, when she comes off of maternity leave. One thing I would add is some sort of clock to time pit stops. That has been fairly commonplace in motorsports coverage for about thirty-five years. Hopefully FOX will have this simple element by Thermal

In the booth, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe sounded very familiar and have made a very smooth transition. Here is where I will probably ruffle feathers. I’ve never been a huge Will Buxton fan, and this weekend did nothing to change my mind. I never hated Leigh Diffey like a lot of people did; but I’m thinking if you didn’t like Leigh Diffey, I’m pretty sure you won’t like Will Buxton either.

To me Buxton is Leigh Diffey 2.0; except the new version makes you want the old version back. His voice and accent sound similar to Diffey, but he doesn’t come across being as likable as Diffey.  Maybe he was trying way too hard, but he just seemed Way. Too. INTENSE!! I’m hopeful that he will relax more by Thermal. Maybe I’m being too critical. Or it could just be that in the first few seconds of the first broadcast on Friday, I noticed something that completely destroyed Buxton’s credibility with me. Then again, I’ve always had trouble getting past a man wearing a thumb ring. Call me shallow and superficial, but at least I’m being truthful.

As much as I liked their halo graphics, their leaderboard or whatever you call it on the left-hand side of the screen needs more than a few tweaks. It needs a lot of work. I noticed throughout all of practice and qualifying, it was not even visible. I’m assuming it wasn’t working properly, but that has become an important item to us over the past couple of decades. In the race, it seemed to work but there was way too much going on with it and not enough of other things – if that makes sense. Driver’s names seemed to mysteriously drop out of nowhere as they slotted into position. I’m still not sure what that was about. I noticed during the one caution period, there was no lap counter. I was wanting to know how many laps of racing we were missing with the cleanup, but there was no way to know.

I also found showing the pictures in larger slots for the Top-Five was unnecessary. I would like to see more names displayed, instead of showing the cartoonish headshot that FOX insists on using across all of their sports. At least, the dreaded FOX robot didn’t make an appearance yesterday. Speaking of more names displayed, the leaderboard was supposed to rotate the bottom half of the leaderboard to show those running lower than thirteenth. It rarely did. For several minutes, I stared at it trying to see what position Santino Ferrucci had fallen to. Either it was stuck, or someone was asleep at the switch. Maybe they think if a driver is running below thirteenth, they don’t deserve to be shown.

With so much tire strategy going on, it would’ve been nice to have it shown which tire a driver was on. Say what you will about NBC, but they gave us a lot of useful information in their leaderboard without a lot of headaches or requiring a lot of explanation. FOX would do well to just replicate that, instead of adding a lot of useless bells and whistles – especially when they don’t work properly.

To me, getting the leaderboard info center is the most important thing to get right. If announcers annoy you, you can always silence them – although I never did that, even in the Todd Harris days. But when you don’t know where your favorite driver is, or what tire strategy they are on or how many laps are left – it’s hard to know what’s going on. Yes the halo graphics are nice, but FOX needs to fix their leaderboard before the next race at Thermal.

But aside from some fairly major glitches with their leaderboard and me being personally annoyed by Will Buxton, I thought FOX had a better than solid debut. They were really quite good for their first time out of the box. Fix the leaderboard and they will be in the A-grade territory.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 3, 2025 at 4:05 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.