With news about the National Hot Rod Association’s in-house television broadcast production beginning to surface, longtime on-air analyst Mike Dunn announced Oct. 28 he did not survive the transition from ESPN.

“I found out this week I will no longer be the on-air analyst for the NHRA after the conclusion of this season.  The NHRA has decided to go in a different direction starting in 2016,” Dunn said in a prepared statement he sent to members of the media.

“Drag racing has been my love and my passion for all of my life. I will always love the sport, so I am hoping that the decisions that have been made will be beneficial to racers as well as the great fans that watch our sport,” he said.

“If I brought nothing else to the show the one thing all racers and fans could depend on was my honesty, accompanied by my ability to never allow my feelings to sway my judgment and to always do my best for the sport,” Dunn said.

He thanked fans, friends, and ESPN.

“It was a wonderful 14 years, and I want to express my love and thanks to our friends and fans.  I also want to thank ESPN for the opportunity to work with some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to work with,” Dunn said.

It is believed that Dunn’s on-air partner, Dave Rieff, will join the FOX broadcasting team, but that has not been confirmed.

Terry Blount, the NHRA’s vice-president of public relations and communications, shared some details of the new arrangement.

He said the TV package will include “some sort of studio presence.”

In a different approach from that of ESPN, FOX – according to Blount – promote the NHRA telecasts heavily on air and its other sports platforms.

Blount said the telecasts will contain more feature-like content and more in-depth profiles of drivers.

“We’re going to take the approach that we have people who are watching this who are going to be new and who don’t know all these drivers or don’t know a lot about them. We want to tell more personal stories about them. That’s one way we’re going to be able to go live and make up for the down time in between rounds,” he said.

“We’re also going to show a lot more interaction in the pit. Even though the hardcore NHRA fan knows the access they have to drivers, a lot of people don’t know. We’re going to emphasize that,” Blount said.

“We want to show that you don’t just sit in the stands for five hours. In between rounds you go out and interact – you literally interact – with these teams and these drivers. We’re going to do a lot of that,” he said.

Blount also said, “We’re going to have a bigger pre-race presence than we’ve had in the past on television, more build-up to the event before we actually start the racing part of the telecast.”

Photo courtesy NHRA/National Dragster