As visitors to our website have discovered, we have been breaking down the number and times of the commercials for each Cup race. We began doing this in early September with the Sony HD 500 race in California.

The fans have enjoyed this information very much, even if what is being tallied up is something that is a big point of contention with them. The posts following the articles and the emails we have received are pretty much unanimous in one thought: that fans do understand there have to be commercials, but the amount and spacing of them throughout the races are widely jeered.

This past Sunday, NBC was the broadcaster of the Dickies 500 race from Texas Motor Speedway. We began recording the racing vs. commercials airtime with the Invocation at 2:41 PM. The times were going along as usual until approximately the last hour of the race, when suddenly, at least for our viewing area, the commercials disappeared. The last 52 minutes of the race went commercial-free. Up until that point, the longest period of time a race had gone uninterrupted was 29 minutes at the California race (since the time we have been recording this information); but even that is quite long compared to what is normally aired.

What brought this on? Was it because the race was running into the broadcast of ‘Football Night in America’ and the Colts vs. Patriots game which followed right after? We can only guess.

We are intrigued, though, by some of the responses of the fans in their posts following our breakdown. It appears that not everyone enjoyed these 52 minutes of uninterrupted racing. Check some of the posts following the Dickies 500 breakdown to see what we mean.

We want to hear from the fans. Did you get to see this block of time commercial-free, or not? And what city are you from? Please post the information so we can see who enjoyed a whole lot of racing, and who didn’t.