It’s official!! Rick Allen called his last Cup race yesterday in the rain-delayed FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway for NBC with Australia’s own Leigh Diffey will now replace him for the top job as the network’s main Cup announcer starting at Daytona this weekend. Analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte will remain unchanged whom they will both welcome Leigh into the booth while Rick will continue to call Xfinity Series races for the rest of this season including the last eight Playoff races that will also be an NBC Sports production for the CW Network.
And for those wondering who will be taking Leigh’s spot when it comes to IndyCar at least in the short-term on NBC before it moves to Fox next year, it will be veteran Indianapolis sports & motorsports broadcaster Kevin Lee. You can also hear him this week with the hour-long highlights races from the Gateway St. Louis 500 weekend on 9Go starting today at 12-1pm, Saturday afternoon at 2-3pm and overnight Sunday morning at 2-3am.
So yeah won’t be the same without Leigh for those tuning in regularly on IndyCar, especially when it was on one of the Nine free-to-air digital channels during the week. But for us NASCAR fans, it’s a big boost seeing him commentate the Cup races more often now as NBC’s main NASCAR announcer – he will call the second-half season races including the Championship 4 Finale in Phoenix this early November. And if you want to hear the best of Leigh, Foxtel/Kayo is the only place to watch the NASCAR races live here including on-demand replay content.
Other than that, it’s been a long time coming for Leigh to step up into another top job he wanted for a long time on top of his Track & Field duties, having recently called the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris for NBC. NBC will keep the Cup rights for another seven years going into 2025 under the next NASCAR TV rights contract and Leigh is the perfect commentator to help bring us these good and bad moments from start to finish – how good!!
And on Rick, it’s been a pleasure hearing you commentate over the best of the last 10 years including at a time when you, Dale Jr, Steve and Jeff were a stunning four-man group called The Booty Boyz until the end of the last year after Dale Jr. left. We wish him all the best in the near future.
The Coke Zero Sugar 400 weekend race at Daytona will be on a Sunday morning here since it’s a Saturday night race rather than on a usual Monday from 9.30am AEST.
