Too Many Commercials Blacks Out Crash With Blaney, Elliott

What’s Happening?

With 11 laps remaining in the second stage of the 65th running of the Daytona 500, a crash would take out some big names including fan-favorite Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick and reigning NASCAR Most Popular Driver, Chase Elliott.

The crash came short after green flag pitstops which bunched up the field thus creating some squirrely moments at the front. This crash in particular started as Kevin Harvick, who is competing in his final Daytona 500, got and run and slammed into the back of Tyler Reddick at his new home at 23XI Racing in the Monster Energy No. 45 as he took over for an injured Kurt Busch following the 2022 season.

After Reddick got out of shape and hit the wall, Ryan Blaney was tagged from behind and also got into the wall with a vicious hit. The wreck also collected Chase Elliott as he plowed into the side of Legacy Motor Club driver of the No. 43, Eric Jones thus breaking the RR Arm of the No. 9 Napa Machine which ended the 2020 Cup Champion’s day. 2021 Champ, Kyle Larson, spun as he avoided the incident

You Need To Know:

• The race caution free through the first stage with most of the drivers playing nice, presumably waiting it out for the end.
• But, as time has shown, too much straight green flag racing without incident only tightens things ups, especially following the chaos of green flag pitstops on a superspeedway such as Daytona, thus leading to calamity and a lot of fan favorites exiting the race early.
• The wreck happened during a NASCAR On FOX side-by-side of which fans were not shy about expressing their frustrations. Rather than cutting back to the action as soon as the crash occurred, the FOX team waited until the end of the commercial cycle which only intensified fan frustrations.

The commercial issue was one NASCAR On FOX has been dealing with over the last several years when it came to their NASCAR coverage. Fans noticed that not much has changed in that area over the off season, much to their disappointment.

It seems as though the FOX olive branch of a NASCAR side-by-side is not enough with many of the fans angry that NASCAR did not cut right back to the track when the incident occurred like they had several years in the past.

Main Characters

Tyler Reddick was hit in the back by Kevin Harvick as he caught a head full of steam. Reddick was mowed down and got into the wall. Here Matt Weaver catches up with Reddick after the crash:

Erick Jones also got a big hit as he plowed into by Chase Elliott. Here you can hear his radio communications:

Ryan Blaney had what was possibly the hardest of them all as he hit head-on coming out of turn four:

NASCAR’s reigning Most Popular Driver, Chase Elliott, was also involved in this wreck. It ended his day too:

NASCAR On FOX is being heavily criticized by fans for not cutting back to the wreck as it happened, electing to finish their commercial cycle. They did, however, have the time to catch this footage of Chase Elliott’s torn up 9 machine:

In The Stands

savingezra on Twitter lets their frustrations known…

Seems to be a common theme with this thread…from DJJ

Keith Loose questions the balance between racing action and commercial breaks.

Scott claims that this is the worst broadcast in his 20+ years of watching NASCAR:

Cent Clone credits Toyota for FOX’s side-by-side coverage:

While the wreck itself was bad and not ideal, and a lot of good, race win contending cars got caught up in it, it wasn’t the primary takeaway from the incident. That prize would go to FOX Sports and their questionable race broadcasting strategies.