This year’s coverage of the INDY 500 on NBC sports was so excruciatingly bad I had to turn it off. It was impossible to enjoy or even concentrate on the race thanks to the gross over saturation of commercial breaks. Literally, there was a fucking commercial every six or seven minutes – no matter what was happening on track or how good the racing was.

NBC’s coverage was a slap in the face of every true race fan.

I mean, I’m a huge motor racing fan. I’ve been to the INDY 500. It’s an incredible spectacle and the racing is close and exciting to watch, especially in person.

But NBC’s coverage has been consistently awful. We got to see six or seven minutes of actual motor racing interspersed between 3 to 4 minute commercial breaks…DURING A LIVE SPORTING EVENT!!! Fuck, only in Umerka!

I couldn’t stand to watch after about an hour. It was simply unbearable.

How the average Umerkin viewer is able to accept this kind of abuse is beyond me.  Coverage of IndyCar in general is profoundly awful, but this is the INDY 500 for fuck’s sake! Don’t people want to like, watch the race? Or would they rather see an endless series of ads for cars, beer, drugs or The Army? NBC Sports is truly garbage.

It’s the goddam The INDY 500: can we actually focus on the LIVE race? The ‘Greatest Spectacle of Motorsport’ was basically treated as FILLER for the commercials. It was infuriating; especially when a good deal of the action took place during the breaks, and we had to re-watch replays of all the shit we just missed…

What’s even more irritating is all the random chit-chat from the commentators to highlight the “feel-good” aspect of the event, when the focus should be on the racing itself – not human interest stories. Personally, as a race fan, I hate that. It’s like NBC wants to focus on everything except the actual race that’s going on live right before our eyes!

But we aren’t entitled to watch the world’s most famous motor race without having to pause every few minutes so that corporate Umerka can cram more worthless crap down the throats of the unwashed masses. NBC Sports spews out advertising NON-STOP while giving short-shrift to race fans.

Let that sink in for a minute.

One thing you can say about Formula One is that at least SKY Sports [via ESPN] broadcasts all the races live COMMERCIAL FREE. Without the constant breaks the action is easy to follow [even if the racing itself can sometimes be tedious]. The commentators also give relevant information which contributes to the overall quality of the broadcast.

I’d rather watch a tedious commercial-free F1 race than the fucking INDY 500 broken up into short bursts of action wedged between a whole bunch of commercials!

But okay: I’m sure the rest of the world got to watch the Indy 500 without all those goddam interruptions. Only in Umerka are viewers treated with such contempt…and no one bats a fucking eye.

Am I the only one who even noticed? Sigh.