The technology that superimposes lines across football fields, to show where teams need to go to get first downs, is coming to NBC’s NASCAR coverage. NBC, picking up the second half of the NASCAR season starting with Saturday’s Pepsi 400, has used the lines on Olympic ski jumping and swimming. On NASCAR, it will show viewers where drivers, coming out of caution flags, begin to break formation and accelerate to resume racing. NBC will also use a ”virtual engine” — a computer simulation letting viewers see re-creations of what’s going on under the hood without the grease — as well as put an aluminum engine in the broadcast booth, also for educational purposes. NBC producer Sam Flood also promises the network will put ”more celebrities” in the race car that analyst Wally Dallenbach drives around tracks before races for taped features. Says Flood, likely speaking for many viewers: ”We like to have Wally scare the [heck] out of people.” But not sponsors: Amidst speculation that NASCAR broadcasters sometimes give more exposure to race teams whose sponsors are also TV advertisers, Flood says he’s ”never had any pressure from anyone” to do such a thing.(from USA Today )(7-2-2003)
