I watched the race replay on YouTube yesterday, and it confirmed a few things that I suspected.

Pit stops hurt Colton Herta badly. I hope his team can get it together because he has a strong enough car to fight for the championship. He now has a significant gap to make up given Alex Palou’s consistency.

Tire strategy made the race compelling for a diehard fan, but if I were watching as a casual observer, I may not have stayed until the end of the broadcast.

I learned this morning that race day attendance was 165,000. I would like to know the total for the weekend. Television numbers are not out yet.

Speaking of television, a few notes about the broadcast. Much willecho what others have said.

The IndyCar on FOX debut was a solid extra base hit, probably a double. The commentary was very good. James Hinchcliffe and Townsend Bell seem to have stepped up their game from NBC. Will Buxton had a decent first outing.

Pit reporting was solid with veterans Kevin Lee and Jamie Little. Jack Harvey’s debut was very good, and I’m sure he will improve each race. During the media scrum on Friday Harvey took copious notes and asked questions of drivers. He was well prepared.

The biggest presentation issue I had was when Newgarden’s pass of Dixon wasn’t shown live because they were covering a pit stop. All pit stops are pretty much the same, and we don’t need to see all 27 cars pit two or three times a race. It’s okay for the first stop, but late in the race just show the leaders’ stops, especially if they pit together and race off pit road.

Graphics

As many have pointed out, this the network’s biggest issue at the moment.

The scoring pylon is a bit too large. We nee to see which tire the cars are on and the intervals between positions. Spots below the top 5 need to rotate more often. Fans want to see where their favorite driver even if he isn’t contending. The lap counter seemed to come and go.

Fox fell into the trap every other network has in switching from counting laps to showing how many laps to go. It reverted to the lap counter. I think most fans are smart enough to count.

FOX did show some informational tidbits in the lower right hand corner, such as how many cars pitted during the caution. More things like that would be fine.

The telemetry display is a nice feature, but I wonder if teams afre happy with their sponsors names being blocked while it’s running. I think some kind of workaround is needed. I found it hard to get used to yellow for accelerating and blue for braking.

One thing I did not miss was the ERS deployment display. I never thought last year that contributed much to my understanding of the race.

I think FOX overall had a very good debut, and I’m sure we will see improvement every race. I want a perfect telecast by the Indianapolis 500. Eric Shanks talked some about that on Saturday at St. Pete. I will share that later this week.