NASCAR insiders react to Leigh Diffey call at Iowa, first NBC broadcast of season

NASCAR once again switched broadcast partners ahead of the Iowa Corn 350 on Sunday. This time NBC took over the broadcast.

That network will carry the rest of the season, so viewers did their best to make themselves comfortable. Apparently not everyone was a big fan of NBC’s broadcast, something hit on by insider Jeff Gluck on The Teardown podcast after the race.

“Were people saying it was bad?” Gluck asked his co-host. “I thought it was a normal (broadcast). I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what I do like is Leigh Diffey. And people who are in my mentions and replies, ‘Oh, Leigh Diffey, I can’t stand the accent.’ Good lord. He’s one of the best sports announcers period. Makes it exciting. And people are going to complain because he has an accent? Wow. OK. Sure.”

That’s not to say the broadcast was without other complaints. Gluck himself complained about one decision to go to commercial break right in the middle of a riveting battle for the lead between William Byron and Brad Keselowski.

Still, the overall feel for the race was on point, Gluck said. As fuel became a factor he was a big fan of NBC’s use of graphics to help aid the viewers.

“I was glad that they had some sort of a fuel graphic, even though they don’t have the cool burn bar that Prime had,” Gluck said. “That’s proprietary technology for Prime. They did have the fuel graphic.”

Gluck further expanded on the fuel graphic, which proved to be a little imprecise as the race wore on. Byron seemed like he would run out of fuel based on the graphics, but he lasted through the end to claim the win.

“Now here’s the problem, though. That is very estimated fuel remaining,” Gluck said. “Because you don’t know how much fuel they put in the car. They can’t measure that. They have no way to measure how much fuel is in or how much fuel is actually left. They’re just judging off how many laps have been run, I believe. The burn bar used AI to calculate like how much they were actually using and stuff. I don’t think the NBC version is doing that.”

All in all, though, Gluck seemed to think the NBC broadcast provided viewers with a pretty well-rounded show. And there were some insightful tidbits that helped, too.

“I thought there was some good elements,” Gluck said. “Just by the way, when we’re on the NBC topic, when Byron was defending at one point, defending really hard on Keselowski. It was at the end of Stage 1. They immediately popped up a graphic that said ‘top defenders,’ the NASCAR insights of the season. You had Byron up there No. 3, you’re like OK, see, Byron’s a good defender right now. Which, as we know, playing defense with this car on the short tracks, it was very Dover-esque in a way. Track position meant a whole lot.”

NBC will carry the rest of the season, so it’ll be interesting to see if the network can avoid the criticism of poorly timed advertising breaks and the like. Next up is Watkins Glen, which will air at 2 p.m. ET on USA.