Another NASCAR Sprint Cup Awards Banquet is in the books. Jimmie Johnson collected his fourth Sprint Cup trophy in a row in front of a live audience filled with drivers, owners, crew, media and fans.
Overall I think the show was improved over the 2008 edition. SPEED did an excellent job with the coverage although I could have used a little less preshow. We waded through more than two hours of fluff before we heard from the first driver.
I thought the speeches were... ok. Some drivers did a better job than others. Kasey Kahne clearly wasn't comfortable working off the teleprompter while Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Jimmie Johnson have the experience to deliver like pros.
Comments
Denny Hamlin and Kurt Busch handled their speeches quite well; Denny especially.
I agree it was way better than last year or the year before, but the pacing was still off.
The first musical act? What the Sam Bass Hill was that? A ‘Signature Song’ should be something actually original to the group and their little choreographed steps were silly. It was so cheesy-Vegas it wasn’t funny.
They needed to work on both the sound and the lighting. They were terrible — unable to follow the MCs around. The comedy routines were too long (and it’s sad because Frank Caliendo is immensely funny) or they needed to have better miking from the audience. You’d see glimpses of people cracking up but you couldn’t hear them. It gave the impression the comedians were bombing.
They needed to stop putting the camera on Rick Hendrick. It was like he was a wax statue. Betty France also sounded like she was three sheets to the wind.
That all being said, Rick’s heartfelt acceptance of the Brian France award was the highlight of the evening and for the most part, there were good things to keep it afloat all night.
The Sprint representative needs to never make a joke again, though!
The show was a little better. I’m surprised I bothered to watch but I only watched the drivers speeches (and skipped Jimmie’s of course).
I agree that the 2 hours of “fluff” at the beginning was a bit annoying. They should have integrated that between driver’s speeches. It did seem better that all the speeches were done at once, but if they did a couple drivers then added some “fluff” it would have been fine. This is assuming the “fluff” would be kept to one act or presentation.
What really bothered me most was that when they showed shots of people in the crowd they were terribly blurry and unfocused. I also agree Todd, that we needed to hear the audiences reactions better. I actually did wonder whether the crowd thought the comedians were funny or just giving them the cold shoulder.
Overall it was better. Now if they could just work on a few things and organize it better it’d be great and I might actually ENJOY watching it.
I also want to send a big THANK YOU to the drivers who didn’t use the prompter.
It made your speeches sound so much more sincere!
Thank god for my pvr & the fast forward button. Sorry folks, most of the show was just one big commercial for NASCAR. Nice to see & hear from some of the drivers, but other than that…? Most of the warmup was boring, the “comedian” was bloody horrible, Brooks and Dunn were great as usual, the girls of Escala were “smokin’” but overall a really big BORE.