Kyle Busch was very happy about winning the Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday afternoon. In Victory Lane, he spoke with the SPEED TV crew and told them something else he was happy about.
All the NASCAR team planes had been grounded because of the weather back in the Concord, North Carolina area. Kyle got another night in Vegas.
While this might make for some interesting sights in the casinos on Sunday night, there is something else that the weather is probably going to affect and that is the Monday TV shows.
Chad Knaus and Michael Waltrip are supposed to team with host Steve Byrnes for the Monday version of This Week in NASCAR on SPEED. The show tapes Monday afternoons at the new SPEED HD studios on Harris Blvd. in the Greater Charlotte area. That program would seem to be in big trouble as even Byrnes was in Las Vegas working on the Fox telecast.
It may well be that SPEED gathers the three parties together in Las Vegas, as the snow is expected to continue most of the day on Monday. There are certainly several facilities that could host and uplink a show on short notice in that TV-friendly town.
Update from SPEED: Ralph Sheheen will step-in for Steve Byrnes, but both Michael Waltrip and Chad Knaus made it back to Concord, NC and will appear as scheduled.
Over at ESPN, the Monday version of NASCAR Now might be in a little better shape. Nicole Manske is filling in for Allen Bestwick this week and she is already at ESPN. We also know one of her panelists, Ricky Craven, is already in Bristol, CT as well. Craven was the analyst on the Sunday morning version of the show.
The two other folks scheduled for the program are Randy LaJoie and Ray Evernham. While neither of them was in Las Vegas to our knowledge, both of them are regularly in the North Carolina area and the East Coast travel corridor is a mess.
It may well be Manske and Craven again on Monday night. These two have a great on-air relationship and the Sunday morning program was perhaps the best of the pre-race shows in terms of racing content.
Update from ESPN: All hands are on deck and the show will proceed as scheduled with Manske, Craven, LaJoie and Evernham.
Thanks to both ESPN and SPEED for providing the updates on Monday's TV shows.
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