2020 NASCAR Thread

Sterling Marlin.

 

Schrader was the first one to the car after the crash and could be seen waving the EMS folks to the car. He has never spoken about what he saw. I think Dale Jr. thanked him for that on the podcast.

 

Schrader has spoken about it in private off the record. What he saw was horrific. You can tell by his reaction if you go back and watch the video.

 

I had some brief dealings with Schrader when he was running with Kodiak and then Bud as sponsors.

Nice guy, easy to talk to in my experience.

I asked him once why Hendrick had his team using a different motor than the 5 and 24. I can't remember who was making either, but clearly Schrader's team was lagging in performance. He blew an engine at Daytona or Charlotte (can't remember where exactly) leading the race during this time.

 

I remember watching that race on TV. While the rest of the cars were hitting the finish line, the camera showed Earnhardt's and Schrader's cars drifting down to the infield together and then a few seconds later, Schrader out of his car and going to check on Earnhardt with no one else in camera range.

Then, a few minutes later, they had Schrader on camera in the pits and asking him how Earnhardt was, and Schrader said he didn't know because the EMTs were already there and he didn't want to get in their way. That's when I knew the outcome was probably the worst-case scenario, because there was no way the EMTs got there first, and Schrader obviously didn't want to disclose what he saw before the official announcement was made.

 

Watch the video where Schrader goes to the window and then backs away.

 

Thank God the autopsy photos never got out.

 

I can't remember if it was Ed Hinton or who that tried to use public records to get the photos, and I argued that he had no business seeing the photos. He was as sports writer and couldn't add anything by seeing the photos. Now if the paper wanted to hire an independent doctor to review them, that would be different. A freakin sports writer can't determine anything by looking at autopsy photos.

 

We had the race on the sports department TV. When that happened, we scrapped the front page design to get ready for bad news.

 

This iRacing thing might be working out.





From the March 26 article about the virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway referenced in the Nielsen Sports tweet:

According to Nielsen viewership data in the U.S. on the Fox Sports 1 broadcast:

• An average of 638,000 homes and 903,000 viewers (P2+) tuned in to the race, making it the most watched linear esports broadcast in history.
• 1.6 million unique viewers P2+ watched the broadcast for at least six minutes.
• These viewers tuned in for an average of 59.42 minutes, more than half of the 112-minute broadcast.
• The broadcast also exposed NASCAR to new viewers, bringing in 255,000 viewers who hadn’t yet watched a NASCAR Cup Series race in 2020.

Beyond broad television viewership, there was also significant social buzz during the race. According to Nielsen Social Content Ratings data:

• The March 22 virtual race was the most social TV program of the day on Twitter, generating 217,300 interactions and 912,500 video views.
• NASCAR drivers had a commanding presence during the televised race, accounting for nearly half (49%) of all owned Twitter engagement (across NASCAR, team, driver and media profiles) around the iRacing Pro Invitational Series broadcast, a much larger share than during live NASCAR Cup Series races.

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Further deets from Kyle Parrish, who handles audience insights for NASCAR:

 

Not trying to be ghoulish or whatever. But I was under the impression that Dale's cause of death was a skull fracture, head trauma from hitting the wall. The force of the collision snapped his head forward. Am I missing something?