I remember being 8 years old and never missing a race on tv. I would always use the tv guides that were at the checker aisle as to when the next indycar race would be. That week I didn't see anything on ABC or ESPN and thought there wasn't a race that weekend. I went over to my friend's house across the street and he was shocked I wasn't home watching the race. His dad had it on the TV. That's when I realized it was on NBC I immediately ran home and started watching around lap 5. That lone race in 1994 on NBC really threw me off lol.
Interestingly this race was on the same Sunday that was the decision of the World Cup. Here in Brazil, while Globo, Bandeirantes and SBT covered the final between Brazil vs Italy, TV Manchete passed the Grand Prix of Toronto. And curiously started at the same time the decision.
RAIDER LOPES MARTINS Who broadcasted that race for TV Manchete? I assume both Teo Jose and the late, great Luciano de Valle were both in Pasadena at the World Cup final.........
4:30 race start with first yellow flag 6:09 second green flag 7:02 second yellow flag 11:36 third green flag 16:10 third yellow flag 24:34 fourth green flag 1:24:16 end of the race
This broadcast makes you appreciate Paul Page and ESPN, even more than you might already. NBC's production was horrible, Lampley isn't as good of a play by play man as Page and without Paul keeping him somewhat calm, the normally entertaining Derek Daly was annoying as hell.
if you look at the credits this race was produced by ESPN so you probably shouldn't give them a whole lot of credit. At the time ESPN owned the broadcast rights to every CART-sanctioned Indycar race (not including Indianapolis which ABC owned - at the time although they were owned by the same people ABC Sports and ESPN were distinct entities although they increasingly began to share things) and then ESPN would sometimes buy time on broadcast networks - usually ABC although NBC and CBS each got one race - and then make money by selling the ad space. The one thing that the network would control was the on-screen talent: ABC/ESPN clearly didn't want Page on another network and while CBS could easily use their NASCAR crew NBC weren't showing any racing but they had Jim Lampley under contract to do other sports so they just used him. It was a deal that worked for CART: they got a lot of races on network TV, got paid a decent amount of money and if they had any problems with the TV coverage they only had to deal with one company and not two or three different networks. It worked for ESPN since it was profitable for them to buy time on the Networks plus they kept the rights to repeat all of the races (including the NBC and CBS ones) on their networks. I don't know how long this deal lasted for but after ABC and ESPN began to merge they stopped buying time on the other networks and they were exclusively on ABC/ESPN until they left after 2001.
@@HighlandCall this deal lasted until 1998, though after 1995, neither NBC or CBS aired a CART race as all of the races went to ABC. CBS would focus almost exclusively on NASCAR until 2000 when it came to motorsports (though they did air an IRL race at Charlotte in 1997 & 2 more races at New Hampshire & Dover in 1998). The only reason why CBS aired those last two IRL races was because ABC was airing FIFA World Cup matches & the US Women's Open in golf on those days. As for NBC, apart from airing the Macau F3 GP later in 1995, they would take an almost 4 year break from motorsports until 1999 when they aired a couple of ALMS races & the NASCAR season finale from Homestead.
The engine they started the season with had a cross plane crank which was just bizarre for a turbocharged racing engine even back then...by this time Rahal had newer units with a flat plane crank, but Groff and Johnstone still had the cross plane version (edit: apparently Rahal was running the older spec in this race too)
The amount of pay drivers in that first crash 😂. Lampley is terrible. I really enjoyed the 1987 road course races where you'd get Jackie Stewart with Paul Page
Man how awful is Jim Lampley...where on earth is Paul Page? Lampley was one of the most irritating sports announcers in broadcast history. Page? One of the greatest, and arguably the best American motorsport, announcer of all time. Nails on chalkboard.
