Dale Earnhardt Jr. defends FloSports after South Carolina 400 difficulties

This past Saturday’s South Carolina 400 at Florence Motor Speedway was the most highly anticipated Late Model Stocks race this year, thanks to Dale Earnhardt Jr. making his return behind the wheel of the No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet for the first time since 2007.

Unfortunately, the event was snake bitten by technical issues on the FloRacing broadcast. At multiple times throughout the race, the audio cut out, the stream cut out and sometimes, both happened at the same time.

Earnhardt discussed the broadcast issues during Monday’s “Dale Jr. Download,” asking fans to go easy on FloRacing “because they are the only ones really that are trying to bring this content to us.”

“Hopefully people aren’t too hard on Flo because they are the only ones really that are trying to bring this content to us,” Earnhardt said. “… I can watch multiple weekly shows with multiple tablets, my phone, my iPad, my Apple TV or whatever it is, my Smart TV — I can watch three or four shows a night on any given weekend. It’s awesome.”

The broadcast booth lost power at one point, leaving Eric Brennan and Blake McCandless without the ability to call the race. To finish out the race, James Pike took up the mantle. The FloRacing pit reporter suddenly had to handle play-by-play and color commentator duties all at once. He had to do it with quite the setup, too. From on top of a trailer in the infield, Pike delivered the race for fans at home. One man with a microphone, his IFB comms and the Race Monitor app to keep track of the running order.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s run at Florence goes sideways late in race

NASCAR Productions issued an apology for the issues with the FloRacing broadcast.

“NASCAR Productions is aware of the ongoing issues related to the live stream of the South Carolina 400 and is working diligently to resolve them. We apologize for these challenges during what we understand is a highly anticipated event,” NASCAR Productions wrote in a statement on X.

As for Earnhardt’s performance at Florence, the NASCAR Hall of Famer started the race in the 37th position and worked his way up to second behind eventual race winner Treyten Lapcevich. Earnhardt had a car capable of taking the checkered flag, but a fuel pump issue on Lap 219 brought his run to an early end. He officially finished 28th.

“I felt great about the car,” Earnhardt said after the race, via NASCAR.com. “Picked them off as I could. The car was excellent, and a lot of guys were starting to struggle with the balance of their car. For the second half, we were going to sit there in second. When it was time to start pressuring [Lapcevich], I could probably get him loose, drive off the corner and beat him.

“It was about time to turn it on and then the fuel pump broke.”

On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this article.