The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs kicked off last year in Atlanta with legal drama and a surprise win by Joey Logano that kicked off what would become a title-winning campaign for the 22 team.
Something that also got its start at the dawn of the playoffs was the production of the second season of NASCAR: Full Speed, the Netflix original docuseries that debuted last January.
The show’s debut slate of five episodes covering the 2023 championship chase received a warm reception from fans and industry members alike upon its preseason release, acting as a sort of primer for the 2024 season.
To the dismay of many, the cat jumped out of the bag early in production that the follow-up slate of five episodes covering last year’s title run wouldn’t hit the small screen until at least mid-April.
April came with little in the way of information or a trailer until the middle of the month — the time the series was alleged to be released — when Netflix finally gave fans a sneak peek at their newest offering.
Just three weeks later, the season debuted with a new slate of five episodes that attempted to cover the 2024 season with a style similar to Formula 1: Drive to Survive and The Last Dance about the 1990s Chicago Bulls basketball team’s dynastic title runs.
(Side note: Netflix hasn’t made any social media posts about the season 2 premiere since posting this trailer on Twitter in April.)
Interestingly enough, Connor Schell, the mind behind production company Words + Pictures, co-produced The Last Dance docuseries and linked up with NASCAR Studios once again for season two of Full Speed, even with some teams like 23XI Racing — co-owned by Michael Jordan — threatening to not participate due to their eventual antitrust lawsuit against the sport’s sanctioning body.
As it turns out, 23XI might’ve kept true to their word.
Tyler Reddick made headlines by winning the 2024 regular-season title and enduring brutal moments like his collision early in the day at the Roval with team owner Denny Hamlin to scrape and claw his way into the Round of 8 where he solidified a spot in the Championship Four at Phoenix with an out-of-this-world move to get around defending champion Ryan Blaney in the final turn at Homestead and win the race.
Outside of an appearance at a Halloween function for drivers’ kids at Talladega, those four lines I just described to you are the extent to which Words + Pictures covered the 45 team.
If you notice, most of Reddick’s “talking head” moments — where a character speaks directly to the camera — aren’t true to the concept as they’re mainly pulled from media scrums and press conferences.
When people not as versed in our sport watch a show like this, they need compelling storylines to hook them. Tyler Reddick’s title chase offered plenty of drama and intrigue, and whether that’s on production or 23XI’s choice to not participate, the narrative of the NFS season two failed to paint an accurate portrait of the 45 team’s 2024 season but particularly, their playoffs full of moments that captivated fans.
Words + Pictures also whiffed in a couple of key moments that come off glaring to diehard fans.
Remember that lawsuit I brought up earlier involving 23XI (and Front Row Motorsports) and NASCAR? At best, there are five minutes about it in the episode that somewhat focuses on Denny Hamlin, a co-owner of 23XI.
News of the teams’ antitrust lawsuit against the sport dominated the NASCAR world for the season’s last 10 weeks, and as the two parties gear up for trial, it would’ve been especially prudent for proper coverage of the opening parts of the trial be examined — not just on a team level and a NASCAR level, but a media level as well.
Words + Pictures acquired a panel of media personalities associated with the sport to help craft narratives, much like Will Buxton’s role in DTS. The panel included contributions from NBC and CW pit reporter Kim Coon, ESPN radio host Marty Smith, and NASCAR Hall of Famer and commentator Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Despite this strong casting, the lack of content and substance centering the lawsuit is troubling at best. To only dedicate a small sliver of the five-episode season that Words + Pictures needed three additional months to develop seems journalistically irresponsible to the audience.
That journalistic irresponsibility permeates the entire season, unfortunately.
One of the most controversial aspects of the 2024 playoffs occurred in the Round of 8 cutoff race at Martinsville where the end of the event became shrouded by rampant race manipulation.
The infamous “Bowtie Blockade” that formed around William Byron’s Hendrick Motorsports Camaro over the final 40 laps to help him advance to the championship race received no coverage while the focus zoomed in on Christopher Bell’s half-hearted “wall ride” that was, at most, vaguely reminiscent of Ross Chastain’s outlawed “Hail Melon” move.
Bell found himself embroiled in scrutiny due to Bubba Wallace’s ailing No. 23 Toyota Camry falling off the pace in the final laps, seemingly sandbagging to allow the 20 to sneak by him to claim the final playoff position. Again, NFS dropped the ball in covering that aspect of the moment.
While it was nice to see NASCAR pull the curtain back to show us what race control looks like in determining Bell committed a safety violation, either NASCAR Studios or Words + Pictures erased the tension of this pivotal moment through poor editing.
Even smaller controversies were ironed out of the streamlined narrative the Netflix original presents, including the Damaged Vehicle Policy (DVP) that marred the Round of 12 races at Kansas and Talladega.
To cut the production team some slack, the 2023 postseason only featured one spoiler (AJ Allmendinger at the Roval) while the 2024 iteration saw three drivers outside the bracket claim victories as Chris Buescher outdueled Shane van Gisbergen at Watkins Glen, Ross Chastain outlasted Byron in Kansas, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. nosed out a victory at Talladega over Brad Keselowski.
With that in mind, none of those drivers received any coverage. While there is an understanding that Netflix’s crew follows the playoff field, leaving out the other 20+ drivers that compete every week diminishes the impact that these victories represent for these race teams.
For Buescher, the Watkins Glen victory saw a contender finally break through in a season of near misses. Chastain struggled mightily as the summer wore on, and the eighth-generation watermelon farmer notched his first win of the season on the eve of harvest in Kansas.
Stenhouse’s triumph might be the worst of all to gloss over as his race team faced an uncertain future with sponsor Kroger and longtime team owners Jodi and Tad Geschickter would be leaving at season’s end.
These are the stories this narrow series continually falters to display to the audience.
Drive to Survive thrives because the production team of the series covers a variety of teams with differing goals and expectations. Though some teams’ title ambitions get extinguished after opening weekend in Australia, DTS provides a look into what those teams still have to race for outside of a championship.
To Words + Pictures’ credit, they profiled underdog drivers like Harrison Burton and Daniel Suárez well for the most part, but in Suárez’s instance, they only scratched the surface of the Mexican driver’s playoff story.
In particular, two races stand out as critical to Suárez’s narrative: Bristol and Kansas. At Bristol, Suárez fought tooth-and-nail to hang onto an uncomfortable race car, falling down four laps throughout the event.
Daniel’s season hinged upon the finish of other drivers, so when he saw fellow playoff driver Ty Gibbs fill up his rearview mirror, Suárez did everything in his power to keep the 54 car behind him.
This gambit paid off as Gibbs cratered down the running order, dropping from the top-5 all the way to 15th, one lap off the pace. That handful of spots Suárez cost Gibbs gave Suárez a slim point advantage over the second-year racer that secured the 99 a spot in the Round of 12.
Something that could’ve been interesting to follow would’ve been to hear from Suárez and his team over the final stage at Bristol as well as asking him questions that pertained to his mindset in the moment, lifting the visor on his helmet to really get inside his mind.
Instead, NASCAR: Full Speed completely whiffs on that moment.
At the following race in Kansas, Suárez earned a top-10 starting spot and toiled through a mediocre day to snag a 13th-place finish while his teammate smashed a watermelon at the finish line after winning the race.
It sure would’ve been compelling to hear from Daniel in the aftermath of Chastain’s victory to see how he reckoned with his race team giving his non-playoff teammate a car capable of winning while he struggled for speed.
Instead, NASCAR: Full Speed completely whiffed, again.
After rewatching USA Network’s Race for the Championship from 2022 during this most recent offseason, that series painted a broad picture across several race teams throughout the whole season (regular season and playoffs) while giving the audience a look into the personal lives of drivers.
Race for the Championship ran for just 10 episodes over a single season and got poor ratings, likely due to its 11pm Eastern start times on the cable-only USA Network.
Though much of this review has focused on the negative aspects of the show, Words + Pictures captured Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney rather well.
Netflix put Logano’s mindset on full display while exposing us to more of his personal life that was touched on at times throughout Race for the Championship. Logano rose to become the star of the program, dropping a cornucopia of great lines that’ll likely catch fire on social media for years to come.
Blaney’s NFS coverage illustrated how difficult it can be to be at the top of a sport. Not only was Blaney tasked with defending his title in this difficult format, he and fiancee Gianna Tulio spent much of their downtime getting prepared for their wedding that took place during the offseason with cameras tailing them.
To sum up this season of NFS, it leaves diehard fans of the sport wanting more from production in all the wrong ways.
Words + Pictures received much of the scolding in this piece, but perhaps they aren’t the ones to blame for much of this production’s shortcomings. After the rousing success of The Last Dance, Words + Pictures set a standard for themselves that NFS absolutely failed to measure up to after its five episodes concluded.
In all honesty, the ire of this production should probably be aimed at Ben Kennedy and NASCAR Studios. Without a doubt, “Big” Bill France’s great-grandson used lessons learned from his industrious patriarch to carefully curate a much different story of the season than the ones fans saw with their own eyes.
It would surprise no one if NASCAR asked Netflix to push the release of the season back to coincide with their ongoing legal battle with the race teams in an attempt to bury stories centering on the case.
The Last Dance docuseries endured its fair share of criticism from those involved and those that found themselves left out for one reason or another, but it wound up well-received anyway because the production allowed audiences to see the myth of Michael Jordan as nothing more than a human being like the rest of us.
Layers and layers of Jordan’s oeuvre peeled right in front of viewers from his mindset going into legacy-defining moments and how he dealt with personal tragedies that deeply affected him.
Jordan might have been the focus, but audiences saw Words + Pictures dive deep into the lives of several key teammates on the 1990s Bulls teams, namely Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman.
When Words + Pictures possess creative liberty with their subject, they’ve proven that they can craft a premier product capable of capturing the attention of the masses.
When producer Connor Schell experiences influence from others while trying to tell a story, the audience receives a vanity project that fails to live up to a program made for cable television.
(Top Photo Credit: Netflix.com)
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