Dale Earnhardt Jr. made the jump from Amazon’s five-race broadcast schedule to TNT’s five-race slate starting in Atlanta, and while he was excited for the transition, he admitted it came with some uncertainty.
Most of the TNT production team was unfamiliar territory for him. That hadn’t been the case at Amazon, where, even though the top layer of the operation was branded Amazon, the actual foundation was loaded with familiar NBC names. As Earnhardt has said before, that comfort level helped the Prime Video broadcasts click as quickly as they did.
But on the latest episode of The Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt laid out several early positives from his debut with TNT, including a few things he believes already set it apart from his days at NBC.
“When I worked with NBC, we had 20 races and we would spend half of that time working out little kinks and never really feel like we were doing our best work, or at least, I felt like I wasn’t doing my best work until later toward the end of the year,” Earnhardt said. “And we’ve got five races here to get this right. So, pretty smart for [TNT] to bring in some of that experience that NBC has.
The debut wasn’t without hurdles. Weather forced the crew to abandon their planned pre-race stage setup behind the pit wall and instead scramble to a booth they hadn’t prepped to use.
“I hated it because it just didn’t give us a chance to get off on the right foot,” he said. “We had a plan that I thought was going to be great, and we didn’t get to utilize it as we had prepared and expected.”
Still, he came away impressed with what the team had been able to accomplish under pressure. Earnhardt praised how the race was cut and spoke highly of the production team’s temperament, calling out the talent in place and the strong ingredients they’ve got to build something special.
He was particularly optimistic about what’s ahead, saying he’s had conversations with several people inside TNT and fully expects a leap forward in execution as they head into Chicago for the street race over the holiday weekend.
