Dale Earnhardt Jr. Gets Harsh Lesson From Fox in Embarrassing Moment at North Wilkesboro

It happened on Lap 29 when cameras were focused on the leaders racing around the 0.625-mile track and the two-time Daytona 500 winner noticed and began describing an incident happening in the back of the field.

”Oh, we got a car in the wall,” Earnhardt started. “The four in the wall off of Turn 2. Everything's clear at the back of the pack.”

“Donovan Strauss with not too much damage at this juncture,” lead announcer Eric Brennan noted. “Race stays green with Lewis still the pacesetter.”

“He's in the wall again off of Turn 4,” Junior said, almost begging the production team to train their cameras on the car involved in the incident.

“Oh, he’s around,” Harvick chimed in.

“And he's gonna spin around here on the front straightaway,” Earnhardt added. “Just a series of events for Donovan over the last couple of corners.”

Incredibly, during that entire exchange between Earnhardt, Brennan and Harvick, the Fox cameras failed to show the No. 4 car of Strauss until Earnhardt said the words “...series of events for Donovan,” or a total of 20 seconds after the initial incident began. 

For NASCAR fans, this has been an all-too-familiar scenario with the Fox/FS1 cameras missing the action that is being described in the booth. 

For Earnhardt, it was a harsh lesson but a temporary one as he'll be working with the Amazon/TNT team for his allotment of 10 races and won't have to worry about dealing with Fox's poor production quality in the future.