Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Leigh Diffey, Jeff Burton, Dale Jarrett, Steve Letarte
MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our NBC Sports NASCAR Playoff media conference call to preview this Sunday’s playoff race in Charlotte and the rest of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Joining us today is NASCAR play-by-play announcer Leigh Diffey, in his second year as NBC Sports’ lead NASCAR play-by-play voice. Alongside him are analysts Jeff Burton, Steve Letarte, and Dale Jarrett, all three of whom have been with NBC Sports since returning as media partners ahead of the 2015 season.
As a reminder, NBC’s Sports’ live coverage of the Bank of America ROVAL 400 will begin this Sunday, October 5th, on USA Network at 3 p.m. ET.
Let’s begin with opening remarks from veteran sports announcer Leigh Diffey.
LEIGH DIFFEY: Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking a little bit of time out of your day to join us and have a chat. As John mentioned, my second season with NASCAR and the NBC family. I really enjoyed this year. Great to get to know even more people in the garage area, and just kind of focus for these 14 weeks on NASCAR and not deviating to other sports has been a real treat as well.
I feel in our portion of the season, we’ve been treated to not only some recent controversies but some pretty cool racing, some good stories. At this time of the year, that’s when it’s most important.
I just feel that it’s going to carry on all the way through right until Phoenix, and that gets us excited. All you have to do is look at last weekend as a sample set, if you will, as an example.
It always helps when you have the most popular driver in NASCAR winning in that most gripping and exciting way. I think that’s going to be a theme that goes into the Bank of America 400 this weekend at the ROVAL, just because of the unpredictability factor, right?
We’re in the business of sport, but we’re also in the business of entertainment, and I think there’s going to be plenty of entertaining things this weekend. Really looking forward to it.
JEFF BURTON: Hey, everybody, thanks for joining. Leigh said it really well. The racing we’ve watched recently has been phenomenal. You go back and look at Richmond, how good that was. New Hampshire was really good. Last weekend was really good. Bristol with the tire thing, that made that race compelling.
We’ve just had incredible racing, all while the heat of the Playoffs is on. It’s a privilege to watch it.
STEVE LETARTE: Thanks, everybody, for joining. I have to agree with what Jeff and Leigh said. There’s been some really fun racing. It’s always a fun time of year to see who kind of excels.
I’ll be honest, I’m waiting for the storyline of the Playoffs to kind of emerge. I feel like it’s still a moving target. Whether it’s Toyota dominant from the first round or then, you know, Blaney and Chase winning here in the second round. So I’m kind of waiting to see what happens at the ROVAL. I think it’s impossible to predict.
We’ve had so many captivating Cup races at the ROVAL, whether it’s Kyle Larson whipping the vehicle around to tie or advance by a point. Or even in post-race last year with the Alex Bowman situation that advanced Joey Logano.
I just feel like this race has always kind of been a center point of the Playoffs, and I think that we’re very fortunate. I know SVG was eliminated as a multi-time winner, but when you look at the rest of the winners who have won multiple times, they’re all still stacked at the top of the standings. I think that’s going to make this race important.
Even moving into the Round of 8, we have all the big stars and heavy hitters and it’s filled up with the big three teams of Penske, Gibbs, or Hendricks.
I think it’s just a precursor to what we’ll see down the stretch as we head towards Phoenix and to crown a champion.
JEFF BURTON: It’s been so much fun. I loved when our drivers, crew chiefs, and crew members got put in positions of high stress.
DALE JARRETT: Everything has been said and well said. I think that I can only add that — and Jeff was kind of alluding to this — just how phenomenal the racing has been. When you get to a place like Kansas and you get to the last lap and you have three different leaders in the last lap of the race, it’s just pretty incredible to think that after 400 miles that things were that close.
I think that, if you look at the races that are coming up to finish this off, these last five, we can have some pretty exciting things happen. The ROVAL has not let us down, I don’t think, at any point in time.
I think as these drivers look, obviously with Chase and Elliott and Blaney locked in, the rest of the guys are looking at how they can win this race with SVG, and then a former winner there in A.J. Allmendinger, who has nothing to lose basically, and they’re just going to go after it.
So they’re going to make life difficult for these drivers. Gathering points throughout the stages is easy to do, but I think — and I’m not trying to take Steve’s job — but as far as how things will go and strategies will play out, because I can’t come close to predicting all of that like Steve can.
But I can tell you that generally, if you stay out and you get those stage points and things, then it doesn’t put you in a very good position a majority of the time in that last stage. So, what you might give up there, was it even worth it?
A lot of things can happen. I think the next round we’ll get through this weekend and see who those eight are going to be. But in Las Vegas, Talladega, Martinsville, I’ve talked to several drivers, and they think that’s going to be the most exciting round of all of them.
I can’t disagree with them because of just how much excitement each one of the tracks brings in its own way. Looking forward to this and can’t wait to cover.
JEFF BURTON: I think it’s just been exciting, and I’m looking forward to this weekend, obviously. Then, as D.J. just talked about, the next round is exceptionally challenging.
Look, the more challenging and difficult it is for the teams and drivers, the better it is for us.
Q. I think we’ve lost some of those superstars we had in the 2000s and 2010s. I’m curious, as storytellers now of the sport, and you guys were superstars and legends in your various roles, how do you guys in your role help elevate drivers into that next generation of transcendent superstars of NASCAR?
LEIGH DIFFEY: That’s a good question with not such a simple answer. It’s a challenging objective, but it’s one that we always try to help with and do. I think you just try and highlight for the viewing audience, maybe a little bit — dig a little bit deeper on the star’s personality, the driver’s personality, maybe away from the track.
I think one guy who carries himself in a certain way and has that swagger in a superstar way is very much Ryan Blaney. We always try the best we can to elevate them any way we can, and it’s a multi-level thing, right? It’s what they do on the track. It’s what they do off the track. How many times have they won? Their personality, both on track and off track. It’s all of those contributing factors.
STEVE LETARTE: I think our job is to cover what they’re doing on the racetrack, and when they do amazing things on the racetrack, we have to cover it as such. We have to remind the fans and the viewers that what they’re doing is over and above what normal people can do. I had the ability to cover this race, yet I’ve never driven the car. I was a crew chief. So that covers the drivers from a slightly different look.
I guess the fans get to determine who the stars are, and the performance of the athletes determines who the stars are. I don’t think the coverage gets to decide who the star is.
I’m a big believer in sports that, while we all love sports, the excitement of victory and the agony of defeat, and I think the excitement of victory and the continued performance on the racetrack allows Blaney to stand out amongst the fray, and I really think it’s our job to highlight what they’re doing that makes them special.
I think Leigh does a great job of that, and Jeff, too. I think it’s our job to identify extraordinary performances when we get them.
DALE JARRETT: I’ll have to say that I think that because of the level of competition throughout, it has gotten so much closer. Since Larson’s championship season and those couple of years where he won a lot of races, we haven’t had anyone to get anywhere near that double digit. So I think that makes it more difficult.
A lot of that comes from the fact that we have a good group when you look at Logano, who has been around for a while, even though he’s still a very young man. He’s kind of the elder statesman, along with Denny. But when you look at someone who has championships and puts themselves in that position, Logano is that person.
This is just a matter of time as you get. Bell’s going to win a championship. William Byron is going to win a championship. That could happen this year. Chase Briscoe has put himself in a position. We talk about these drivers week in and week out, and they are superstars, maybe not in the minds of the fans — and I think that some are maybe now that have been around for a while are maybe having a tougher time as Harvick and others have moved on, exactly kind of latching on to who that superstar is that they want to be their favorite.
That’s going to come. Again, they’re all superstars. I think they all kind of feel maybe that it’s Denny against the rest of them, and they’re all willing to step up to the challenge and see if they can handle him every week.
Q. What is the intensity and atmosphere of a cutoff race as opposed to a regular playoff race? For those drivers on the bubble, what do those preparations look like for them this week?
STEVE LETARTE: I’ll jump in. I think the cutoff races are just another level of intensity because of the finality of the results. Everyone starts the season with the goal of making the Playoffs. When we end the regular season, that goal is ended for roughly 20 of the teams that started; 16 advance. And as we continue to end that down, when you win, you advance. No matter how far behind you are, you have that hope.
If you look at Tyler Reddick and his numbers at some of these road course races, I think his thinking that he can win this road course is a real opportunity. A tall task for SVG and some of the others, but that is still an opportunity.
I think what makes the cutoff races so impressive and so pressure-packed is that when the checkered flag falls, the results are final. If you’re one of those teams hoping to advance and you fell short, I think that’s when it really becomes real.
Up until that moment, you always think there’s another opportunity around the corner. When you roll onto pit road and we see the faces of the crew chiefs, the crew members, and the drivers, you start to see the real disappointment when they’re unable to advance.
JEFF BURTON: I think what happens in the cutoff race, you heard it in Bubba Wallace’s voice last week. He looked at the points after the race. They just had a good race, had a chance to win, and he’s like, only getting one point.
Going into the race, he had two races to potentially gain enough points to get what he needed to get done. Now he knows that at 26 back, unless others have issues and he has a really good day, most likely he’s got to win.
So now he knows this is what we have to do. It’s a three-race schedule. You go into the first one, knowing you have three races to either make good stuff happen or bad stuff’s going to happen, and that’s how you approach it.
It’s a three-race schedule. Clearly, if you win, you move along. But as Steve said, now it stares you right in the face. This is 100 percent what you have to do. So it ramps up the pressure for some, and it lets a little pressure off for others.
If you’re Larson, if you’re Hamlin, if you’re Bell, Byron, those guys, they have less room to mess up now. You have one race to get the points that you need. It actually becomes a little less pressure.
So it really depends on the situation that you’re in, but it’s just with one race, you now know 100 percent what you’ve got to get done.
DALE JARRETT: I think most drivers will tell you, hey, pressure is pressure, but there’s no doubt when you get in this situation that there is added pressure of each lap; each decision that you make becomes more important just because of exactly what Steve and Jeff just said.
It’s going to be the end of a championship run for these drivers when the checkered flag falls on Sunday. No driver wants that. You want to continue to have that opportunity to race for that championship.
For some, it’s going to be that they haven’t had that chance to race for that championship yet, and they want to do that. They want that feeling of what that’s like. Pressure is immense, and there’s no way around it. Just as we saw in the Ryder Cup this weekend, if you had a chance to watch some of that. I was fortunate to stay home this past weekend and see a great race in Kansas and watch a great Sunday of singles in the Ryder Cup. It’s just phenomenal to watch certain people handle pressure better than others. That’s just a fact.
I think that what we have seen so far is that we’ve seen a couple of drivers being able to do that. Blaney is great at that now. I think you see others make pushes and make decisions that are going to affect how they go about it and what their chances are at winning the championship. That’s just another added level.
Points are one thing, and you add pressure to that, then you’ve got a whole other scenario. You add a difficult race circuit like the ROVAL this weekend, realizing that that could put an end to your season, that adds even more pressure to the pressure that you already have on yourself.
Q. Today’s racing is so close, and teams are trying to find any possible way to gain an advantage. AI is something teams are using to do that. I recently spoke with Hendrick Motorsports technical director Tom Gray, who explained how they’re using AI in engineering and decision-making. Then, on a call recently with Zane Smith, he said he’s addicted to ChatGPT for its photo editing ability. I’d like to hear from each of you. Where do you see AI impacting your personal life, if at all, and where do you think it could most affect NASCAR professionally, whether it’s in competition or in broadcasting?
STEVE LETARTE: I’m going to jump in, because of the four on the call, I probably use AI more than my three co-workers. Maybe I’m mistaken there. Look, for the sport itself, it’s impossible to know — I mean, computing power, my years as a crew chief, when I first started as a crew chief, there was no simulation, and I was part of the simulation wave where we created simulation tools and setups. Then we built systems that would run automatic simulations without engineering driving them.
So, in the same way, I think AI is just a huge tool for trying to digest all the data you have. First was data collection, and now you have the data collection, and then what you do with it.
It’s the same with the broadcasters. We have so much available. We have all of these cameras, all of these radios, all of this data and timing and scoring, and it’s impossible for us to watch it all in real-time and prioritize what the story needs to be and be a hundred percent accurate.
I would imagine that AI, much like it is in every field, is just going to help the broadcasters as well as the team, just kind of process down and help prioritize what the fan at home wants to see.
The goal of any broadcast is to cover as much that’s happening that’s live, so less has to be on replay and even less has to be reviewed after the race. So AI will help us capture as much as possible.
JEFF BURTON: I would add to that about the teams. If you want to see a group of people push things to the limit in an effort to make their performance better, give it to NASCAR teams.
It is incredible what they do in the quest to simply go around the track faster than the next guy. They will push the limits. They will find things that don’t work. They will make those things work. And they’ll be doing that behind closed doors.
I can assure you there’s a tremendous amount of effort being put into it, but you may not be hearing about it because no one wants to give up an advantage.
Steve talked about simulation. I remember when we didn’t know what that was. The first time I heard about it, Mark Martin and I were talking to Rusty Wallace, and he mentioned they were using it to help set the race cars. Mark and I looked at each other like we had just no idea this was even a possibility.
Rusty shared that with us, but teams aren’t going to share, for the most part, what they’re doing to get better, and simulation was that way. I mean, certain manufacturers had motion simulators before a lot of people even knew about them.
The teams are unbelievably good at pushing barriers and making things happen, and finding opportunities and then jumping on them, and I can assure you that they are pushing it to its limits, and they will find its limits and find a way to make it go further.
If you owned a technical company and you wanted to be in the AI business and get involved with a Cup team and let them help you, they’ll find what works and what doesn’t work.
LEIGH DIFFEY: I have two teenage sons, and they’re always pushing me to be more involved with AI than I currently am. You can see with the volume of information that we have to process in the broadcast, and the volume of statistics that we have to process in the broadcast as well.
And then to Steve’s point, from the actual TV side of it, the television side production of it, I can’t see how it’s not going to have an impact moving forward. But I see it as a massive positive.
DALE JARRETT: Just speaking from the oldest guy in here, I would just say that it is something that I pay attention to. Never thought that I would, but I do now. I think that there are others out there like myself that have a harder time envisioning and saying why do we need this in the sport, but I understand why the teams do it and what they’re using, because it doesn’t matter if you’re back in the ‘80s, ‘90s, early 2000s when I was racing, we looked at it and used every tool that we could.
Now they have something that is much more massive, and the opportunities are kind of endless as to what they can do as they move forward with this. It has taken things to another level, and I’ll just be quite honest that I rely on Steve to know whatever the hell I need to know about it.
Q. Leigh, in terms of calling this race, how does your approach change for a cutoff race?
LEIGH DIFFEY: It doesn’t really change. I was thinking before, when D.J. was speaking about a cutoff race, the old saying of pressure is a privilege. It’s kind of a privilege for us to call these cutoff races because there’s just so much on the line. We really do lean into what D.J. said, and that is the aspect of who can handle the pressure the best.
Last weekend, who’s going to make that par putt? Sunday Night Football, who’s going to kick that winning field goal? Who’s going to hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth? All those things, those environments.
And also, it goes back into the superstars of the sport, and how are we going to elevate them or promote them? It happens in these kinds of moments. Drives like last weekend for Chase Elliott. That was unbelievable for us to have the privilege of calling a race like that that comes down to the last moment in a second overtime.
For us, when my three mates on this call, when they were either on the box or in the cockpit, they’re the moments they live for. For me, as a broadcaster across a variety of different sports, they’re the moments that I live for, too. It’s awesome.
Don’t change anything. We do the same job. We’re hanging on — we’re really enthusiastically waiting for one of those elimination race moments, and hopefully we’ll see one this weekend.
–NBC SPORTS–