Jeff Burton reacts to chaotic Bristol Night Race, how broadcast booth approached coverage

From up in the NBC broadcast booth, Jeff Burton watched and delivered the NASCAR Playoffs race to the fans at home. It was a battle of tires and there was a ton of chaos throughout he field and all night in the race.

When you have a track that is only half a mile in length and tires are ripping apart every 40 laps, it’s hard to keep up with it all. Cup Series drivers and teams were put to the test on the track. Meanwhile, Jeff Burton and his NBC colleagues had the task of keeping up with the race for the viewers on TV.

This week, Burton was a guest on Door Bumper Clear. On the podcast, he talked about the challenge broadcasters face in these situations.

“Well, I think Steve Letarte, he had a good point,” Burton said. “At some point, we were during a commercial, he said, ‘Okay, we gotta be careful not to cover everything because we’re not going to cover anything if we do.’ Because there was so many different things happening at the same time. And I think that was the right approach. We clearly start – showed when people were pitting, tried to cover that the best we could. But there was no way to get into every driver and team’s day. It was just impossible.

“So, what do we focus on? What are the big picture moment things? That’s a hard thing to figure out. Because every driver has a fan that wants to see what’s going on with their car, right? And you don’t want to leave somebody out, but there’s no way to cover everybody on a night like that. You just had to focus and maybe not cover as long as we would like to cover it. Show it. Don’t even always have to explain it, just make sure you’re showing it. Somebody pitting. Even if you don’t say anything about it. That is a challenge, for sure.”

Burton has been around the sport for a long time. He was part of those wild and intense Bristol races of the past. He compared last week’s Bristol Night Race to those old-school events. Everyone fighting for the bottom lane, bumping each other, and getting close to disaster every lap.

Now, we’re going to New Hampshire this weekend. That’s a place that Burton is pretty familiar with. While we won’t see tire wear like we had at Bristol, the Cup Series is using the Richmond tire for this race. That produced a better product than what we had seen at Richmond in the last few years. Perhaps New Hampshire will also be improved.