{"id":683657,"date":"2026-05-21T07:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T07:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683657\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T07:12:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T07:12:19","slug":"joy-is-the-key-to-nascar-on-primes-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683657\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Joy’ is the key to NASCAR on Prime’s success"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR<\/a> on (Amazon) Prime Sports<\/a> earned widespread critical acclaim last season and crew chief analyst Steve Letarte says their success came from a very simple set of instructions from executive producer Alex Strand.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlex won’t pat himself on the back but I think the Prime group gave us a really clear direction on what was expected,\u201d Letarte said on Wednesday during a media call previewing the streaming platform\u2019s second season, which begins on Sunday with the Coca-Cola 600.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI know it sounds silly, but it was like, \u2018hey, this is what we expect.\u2019 It was very basic, and maybe that isn\u2019t the right term, but very traditional. And I think that guidance when you go to the booth or pre-race, those expectations for coverage made our jobs easy and a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fun is the operative word when it came time for Strand to detail those expectations for Letarte, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and play-by-play lead Adam Alexander while calling races from the broadcast booth.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job is to entertain fans,\u201d Strand said. \u201cThe large majority of these fans will never make it to a race this season, or maybe ever, so we want to bring them to the track. We want to celebrate the race and celebrate the drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey each have a favorite driver. They each have a favorite track. They each have a favorite team. They are watching that day for a reason and the big reason they are watching us is to enjoy that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the worst thing we can do is not enjoy it ourselves. And so, one thing we talk about a lot is sharing that joy with the fans that are watching along. If we can do that, that is a big success.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I have said a lot is that if we lose any viewers from the Coca-Cola 600 to Nashville because they decided, \u2018you know what, that was fun, and I am going to buy a ticket and experience that in person,\u2019 that is a huge success for us. To me, this is all about bringing joy into people\u2019s homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(From <\/p>\n

(From L-R) Carl Edwards, Shane van Gisbergen, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on Prime’s post-rac eshow<\/p>\n

Photo by: James Gilbert \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

And there was a lot of joy associated with their authenticity last season. Letarte says that joy begins with Earnhardt and how much the 15-time most popular driver genuinely loves all aspects of NASCAR.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is infectious with his love,\u201d Letarte said. \u201cRarely there is a sport where the most popular human is the biggest fan of the sport, and we have that, and I don\u2019t take that for granted. He makes me a much better announcer because of his enthusiasm and his drive to be so good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The talent also credited Strand for how much he has positively embraced a sport that he had not spent any time within prior to last season. Strand very quickly understood what fans most wanted out of their broadcast and leaned on his talent to deliver it.<\/p>\n

Fans encouraged the authenticity, the rawness and sometimes, even a lack of polish. For example, pre- and post-race host Corey Lajoie went into last summer thinking he was supposed to be a stereotypical analyst, but quickly realized that fans wanted him to simply be himself talking racing with his friend.<\/p>\n

Basically, it\u2019s what if the Stacking Pennies podcast intersected with the Dale Jr Download and Inside the Race after every checkered flag. Lajoie could easily do that.<\/p>\n

\"Carl <\/p>\n

Carl Edwards and Corey LaJoie<\/p>\n

Photo by: Jared C. Tilton \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I had to be the most well-spoken,\u201d Lajoie said. \u201cI thought I had to know every single note to a T and I don\u2019t know what I expected when it came to TV because I just sat here and talked about racing with my buddy on a podcast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strand said Earnhardt was very instrumental in reading the room of the fanbase.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned that fans want to sit back and enjoy the sport and celebrate what they\u2019re seeing,\u201d Strand said. \u201cI think these are things we intuitively knew because Dale has said it for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put that into (the broadcasts) last year and the reaction was immediately \u2018this is the right direction, please keep going,\u2019 and Dale said, \u2018let\u2019s run it back.\u2019 It\u2019s a very simple direction, but it\u2019s real.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we learned is that fans just want to enjoy the racing and we want to enjoy it with them. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve brought this group together. We have a group that really has a great time at the race track and we want fans to feel like they are right there with us each and every weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nascar <\/p>\n

Nascar prime logo<\/p>\n

Photo by: James Gilbert \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

And that includes their post post-race show, widely believed to be the modern gold standard of what fans want after the checkered flag, aided by the bandwidth Prime has on not having to immediately get off the air like traditional TV partners.<\/p>\n

\u201cPost-race, post-race, post-race, post-race,\u201d Strand said when asked what he wanted to do more of this year. \u201cWe learned that fans stick around. We averaged nearly a million viewers for our post-race coverage, which is holding nearly half the race audience, and that\u2019s huge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a signal to us. Like, we really have to continue investing into this, and we\u2019re doing that across all of our sports as well. \u2026 It\u2019s a huge part of who we are and it\u2019s part of what we are as a streamer and something that\u2019s really important that we are going to continue to lean into.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR on (Amazon) Prime Sports earned widespread critical acclaim last season and crew chief analyst Steve Letarte says…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[250703,49,48,717,13751,634,3628,82],"class_list":["post-683657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-joy-is-the-key-to-nascar-on-primes-success","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-charlotte","tag-charlotte-motor-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}