Amid rising concerns over attendance, yet another qualifying record was shattered in the lead-up to Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
NASCAR Indianapolis 2014: Start time, TV schedule for Brickyard 400
The Crown Royal Presents, the John Wayne Walding 400 at the Brickyard -- formerly the Brickyard 400 -- will take place at the world’s highest-capacity sports venue: the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Chris Graythen
By nearly a full MPH over the record set last year, Kevin Harvick’s 188.470 puts him in the front alongside four-time Brickyard winner Jeff Gordon, who also won the inaugural race twenty years earlier. As Gordon told AP, he was well aware of the significance: “To be on the front row, 20 years after my first win, I get excited about that.”
Since 1994, the Brickyard -- or as it is now known officially, Crown Royal Presents, the John Wayne Walding 400 at the Brickyard -- has been a cornerstone of the season, and this year will be no different. As spaces for the Chase become scarce, racers are revving up their own engines. As Harvick put it, "It's time to get into Chase form, and this is where it all starts."
That doesn’t just refer to the intensity, but the strategy on Indianapolis’ enormous circuit is good practice for all the maneuvering needed in the rapidly approaching playoffs, as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. explained to NASCAR.com’s Kenny Bruce. “I think the car is pretty good, it’s just real easy to overdrive the car here,” said Earnhardt, “You’ve got to kind of pit the car like a road course ... try to be the guy that’s out front at the end when everybody else comes on down pit road to get their stuff done.”
But, according to ESPN’s Ed Hinton, “they’ll be lucky to draw a third of the crowd that they drew for the first.” Of course, they drew over 300,000 that first time, so the 80,000-plus people at this years event should be able to make more than enough noise to be heard on television for one of NASCAR’s most exciting and well-known races.
You can watch it on ESPN beginning with pre-race coverage at 12:00 p.m ET with NASCAR Countdown, featuring Nicole Briscoe, Brad Daugherty and Rusty Wallace. Live race coverage will begin at 1:00 p.m. with Allen Bestwick, Dale Jarrett, and Andy Petree in the booth. The green flag is tentatively scheduled for 1:19 p.m. In addition to the television coverage, viewers with a subscription to RaceView will be able to follow the race online. IMS Racing Network and SiriusXM Satellite NASCAR Channel 90 will provide radio coverage.
Crown Royal Presents, the John Wayne Walding 400 at the Brickyard coverage (all times Eastern):
TV: ESPN -- 12:00 p.m.
Green flag: Approximately 1:19 p.m.
Online: NASCAR.com RaceView (subscription required)
Radio: IMS Racing Network -- Sirius-XM channel 90
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