Joey Logano became the first repeat winner in the NASCAR Cup Series with a victory in Phoenix. MotoGP has postponed its Thailand round until October. World Superbike has cancelled its Qatar round. Formula E has cancelled its race in Rome. Austin is in the verge of a shutdown and it caught the GT World Challenge America series in the middle of its season opener with MotoGP and IndyCar races scheduled to take place there next month. The Bahrain Grand Prix will go on behind closed doors. Fun times ahead. There will be a debut this weekend at the IndyCar season opener from St. Petersburg but it will not be happening on the racetrack. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
Not Enough Room in the Booth
James Hinchcliffe will be on the grid for the 2020 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. It is nothing new for the Hinchcliffe, a veteran driver with 139 starts, a half-dozen victories and an Indianapolis 500 pole position on his résumé.
This time Hinchcliffe will not be sliding behind the wheel of a Dallara DW12 chassis looking for his second St. Petersburg victory. This time Hinchcliffe will be on the grid, microphone in hand, and reporting on the race for NBC Sports.
A slew of untimely and unfortunate events kept Hinchcliffe out of a full-time IndyCar seat for the 2020 season. The Canadian was caught with one-year remaining on a contract with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports but during a time of transition with McLaren partnering with the organization and wanting its own drivers Hinchcliffe was sidelined in favor of Patricio O'Ward and Oliver Askew. However, McLaren would not immediately let Hinchcliffe out of his contract and by the time Hinchcliffe was released all the top full-time rides were gone.
Hinchcliffe will be on the grid for a few races. He already has the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, Indianapolis 500 and Texas on his schedule with Andretti Autosport. A few more may be added but we do know Hinchcliffe will work four IndyCar races for NBC Sports while also working NASCAR's Brickyard 400 weekend and some IMSA races. His main job will be on television and television was a place many people thought Hinchcliffe would end up but perhaps not this quickly.
Every driver will come to the end of a career and realize he or she can only drive so long. Some have their careers end early. The best of them are able to continue into their 40s, some into their 50s, but even if at best you make it to 45 you still have to find something to do with your life for the next 20 years. Television is a great place to keep going in motorsports. A driver can continue making the same trips, staying in the same hotels and seeing the same people for another two decades thanks to television.
The problem with motorsports is the number of television opportunities are few and are in-between. Unlike baseball where there are 30 major league teams, each with a television and radio broadcast partner, some of which even have a Spanish-radio broadcast, and then national television partners in Fox, ESPN and Turner and then MLB Network, motorsports does not have nearly as close to as many high-profile opportunities.
There is one IndyCar broadcast partner. It is NBC Sports. It offers one lead commentator position, two color commentary positions and four pit lane reporters. That is it. There is one radio broadcast for IndyCar and it has the same number of opportunities. If you want to be an IndyCar broadcaster there are 14 spots, maybe a few more. That is it.
Add to it NASCAR, which has two television partners and two radio partners and there are probably another 50 broadcasting positions. Add IMSA, which uses many of the same broadcasters as NBC Sports' IndyCar and NASCAR coverage, but include the IMSA Radio and that is another ten spots.
All in all, there are probably about 75 broadcasting positions for major American motorsports broadcasting. Take into consideration there are broadcasting professionals that are going to fill lead commentator and pit reporting positions the number of spots for former drivers is a small fraction and some of those are already accounted for. There might be a half-dozen open spots each year.
There are a handful of drivers out there that people think are naturals for broadcasting but the truth of the matter is there is not enough room for all of them. Hinchcliffe's IndyCar sabbatical corresponds with the end of Tony Kanaan's career. Kanaan has announced this will be his final season in IndyCar and he is scheduled to run the five oval races for A.J. Foyt Racing. Kanaan is another driver many think has the chops for broadcasting. Kanaan has been in the booth before after early retirements in races, most notably the 2018 Pocono race, and he even got a crack at it with IndyCar's testing coverage last month from Austin.
The problem for Hinchcliffe and Kanaan is they face stiff competition for the broadcasting positions. NBC Sports already has a full crew. Hinchcliffe is an add-on for this year but even this year is not a booth position. He will be on pit lane for most of his time. It will be difficult to usurp Townsend Bell and Paul Tracy from the color commentary positions. A four-man booth is not ideal and though it is done for NBC's NASCAR coverage just because it is done in one instance means it will work in another.
What Hinchcliffe and Kanaan has on their sides is recent experience in an IndyCar and not just any IndyCar but this IndyCar, the universal aero kit-shod DW12 chassis that will be on track for this season. Tracy has not been in an IndyCar race since 2011. Bell's last race was 2016. Bell does stay active in racing with the Lexus GT Daytona program in IMSA. Tracy has run a few one-off sports car races in the last few years.
We are in a changing time for sports broadcasting and thanks to the instance success of Tony Romo on CBS' NFL broadcasts it is a time where recency is king and some see it as vital to a great broadcast. People want someone who is informative in the booth and can explain the nuances of what is going on. Romo stepped in and was calling plays seconds before they happened on the screen. He has done such a damn good job he got a pay raise, how does $17 million a year for broadcasting sound?
Neither Hinchcliffe nor Kanaan are going to get that type of money but their recent experience on track could lead them to pushing a few people out the door. The only issue, and we will still have to wait and see if this will be the case with Romo, is how long is the shelf life for these guys? Hinchcliffe will likely get another full shot at IndyCar, so he still has some time, but if 2020 is going to be it for Kanaan outside of a one-off at Indianapolis for the next four or five years, how long will his insider information stay fresh? How long until he is too far gone and someone else will be better suited in the booth?
It is a difficult question to asking in motorsports. Kanaan has the experience with the car but come 2022 the plan is for IndyCar to have a new chassis and a new engine formula with a hybrid component. Even if Kanaan continues to run as an Indianapolis one-off into 2022 and a little beyond his experience with the car is going to pale in comparison to a driver that is full-time, running at every track and testing with it. It would not take long until someone else is readying for retirement and has a better grasp on what is going on in an IndyCar.
To the retirees it has to be scary because you cannot be forced out of a job five years after having left racing behind but it is the evolution of the industry happening in front of us. Experience is key and if you do not have experience it will be tougher for you to relate and be taken seriously. We saw Darrell Waltrip have a rough final five years in the booth. When he finally stepped away from broadcasting it was nearly two decades after he had raced in the NASCAR Cup Series and close to 30 years since he was last a competitive force.
Jeff Gordon has stepped into Fox's NASCAR coverage and he carries recent experience with him but that is slipping quickly with NASCAR's next generation of car to be introduced next year. Dale Earnahardt, Jr. has even said he hopes he can test NASCAR's new car at some point just to be familiar with the car when it is on track next year.
Relevance is something all motorsports broadcasters struggle with because it is always slipping away. From Gordon to Earnhardt, Jr., Jamie McMurray to Jeff Burton, Paul Tracy to Townsend Bell, Martin Brundle to Calvin Fish, they are all slowly losing the grasp of what is happening on the racetrack. There comes a point when it will pass them by and that is natural. Nothing lasts forever and at some point there will be someone better for the position.
When thinking about this I was wondering if broadcast entities should take an approach that a commentator is only going to last for five or six years because of relevance. Maybe some better commentators could go for ten years but after a decade away how much could one really speak to what is happening on the racetrack? But then I remembered David Hobbs, a man who spent four decades in the commentator positions.
Hobbs commentated on Formula One until 2017, 43 years after his final Formula One race! Hobbs' final serious race was in 1990, unless you consider Fast Masters serious, otherwise Hobbs' final race was in 1993. At no point over the course of the 2010s did I consider Hobbs no longer having relevance to a Formula One broadcast even though he had not driven the turbo-hybrid cars that were on the grid. Hobbs brought a keen eye to the broadcast and some types of experiences never age. He knew what it was like to race in the pressure cooker environments with tough intra-team battles to go along with the ones with outside competitors. Commentary is not about explaining everything that happens on the screen but talking about what is happening and some are much better at it than others.
Though Hobbs had been out of racing nearly 30 years he could still make relevant comments during a broadcast. It was not something that was slipping past him. Others are not the same. For some it becomes obvious that they no longer fit the position. Some will be able to do the job at a high-level for four decades. Others will have a few good years and slip off. Some can't do it at all.
The key thing to remember is not every retiring driver is made for television and even if they are there are very few spots for them and at some point the gig may no longer be for them.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Joey Logano but did you know...
Tetsuta Nagashima won the Moto2 race from Qatar, his first career victory in 70 starts. American Joe Roberts was fourth after winning pole position in Moto2. Albert Arenas won the Moto3 race, his fourth career victory.
Eli Tomac won the Supercross race from Daytona, his fifth victory of the season.
The #93 Racers Edge Motorspors Acura of Shelby Blackstock and Trent Hindman swept the GT World Challenge America races from Austin.
Brandon Jones won the NASCAR Grand National Series race from Phoenix.
Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar's season opener from St. Petersburg.
Formula One's season opener from Melbourne.
Supercars and S5000 will be joining Formula One in Melbourne.
NASCAR has a triple-header in Atlanta.
Supercross is in Indianapolis.
The World Rally Championship is in Mexico.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
