Leigh Diffey Is Ready to Deliver All the 'Drama' NASCAR Has to Offer

When Harrison Burton won his first NASCAR Cup Series race Saturday evening at Daytona, his father, Jeff Burton, quietly celebrated in the press box. His broadcast partner and close friend, Leigh Diffey, delivered the call. There was no better way for Diffey to make his full-time booth debut than this.

The Australian-born announcer has been a mainstay in IndyCar and Formula 1 with NBC Sports for over a decade. With IndyCar's move to Fox Sports in 2025, Diffey moves to the NASCAR booth for a new challenge. Diffey has cut his teeth at the highest level of motorsports and, in his 25-year career, has done play-by-play for F1, IndyCar, Supercross, IMSA, and the Olympics.

Before Saturday, he called every racing discipline at Daytona outside of NASCAR.

"NASCAR was the last one on my list to do," Diffey told Road & Track. "So it's being at Daytona to call NASCAR, as if that was not exciting enough for me. To have that kind of a surprise ending, and as a father of two sons, to see Jeff witness his son get his first cup win and go to the playoffs was an incredibly emotive moment. As a friend of his and a colleague of his, for Steve and I to share that moment with him was something that I will never forget, either professionally or personally. It was just so special."

Diffey, Burton, and Steve Letarte have partnered on the broadcast before. The NASCAR duo joining Diffey for the Indianapolis 500 and Rolex 24 in the past, but now the trio is together long-term.

Like many races this season, the Coke Zero Sugar 400 went to overtime with Kyle Busch and Burton on the front row. For two and a half laps, Diffey started to paint the picture of what a Busch win means in 2024, a season where the former champion has struggled to string together strong finishes. As Diffey's call began to hit its crescendo, the situation changed; in the final corners, Burton made up the difference and passed the 2015 and 2019 Cup champions, and Diffey adapted just as ready to tell the story of Burton's first win and the Wood Brother's 100th.

"Even though I have been in broadcasting for 25 years, the 12 years that I have been at NBC and the Olympics that I have done, NBC has taught me how to be a better storyteller," Diffey said. "I think in the moment, on the fly, It would be like an athlete, a football player reading plays. You have got to think about what is pertinent, what is most important, and what gets the viewers' attention. In that very moment, Kyle Busch had not won at Daytona since 2008. He has had a bit of a miserable run this year, but he was coming off a fourth place at Michigan, and his momentum was building. That would have been a big headline story if he had won and actually raced his way into the playoffs."

"Yet the whole thing got flipped in a second, in a heartbeat, with a guy who is out of a ride next year and is languishing in the regular points. He has a famous last name, but you know, he has not had the runs on the board in Cup that he would have hoped, and boom. We are watching it as fans, but we are also watching it as industry insiders. And you have got to be able to react quickly. I call it reactionary flexibility. It is the ability to react at a moment's notice and make split-second decisions, and go with it. And I really enjoy that part of this job. I love that because there is no better drama than live sport. And that gave us some of the best live drama that we have seen in a long time."

With competition as close as NASCAR sees at a drafting track, this reactionary flexibility is an indispensable skill. Like most things, it is part natural talent and part conditioning. Diffey calls things as he see them and is prepared to deal with the fallout if he gets it wrong.

Last month, Diffey was part of the NBC broadcast crew for the Track and Field events during the Paris Olympics. Early on, Noah Lyles won the Men's 100-meter dash by.005 seconds, but to the naked eye, Kishane Thompson appeared ahead. This is what Diffey called, and he quickly corrected once an official timing announcement was made.

"I put the greatest amount of pressure on myself. There are expectations from NBC Sports and my bosses, but I put the most pressure on myself to perform and do the best job I can," Diffey explained on his Olympic call. "At that moment, I have called a lot of races, and I called a lot of hundred-meter finals, whether it be national championships, diamond league events, world championships, or whatever. In that moment, in literally a blink of an eye I did get it wrong, and I owned that. I said that I got it wrong. I could have been more conservative and said it is too close to call, but I trusted my eyes and my instinct."

Diffey was back in the booth the next day and, for the rest of the Olympics, continued to make calls that some athletes have spent their lives waiting to hear that they were Olympic champions. Diffey's passion for sports and racing is what makes the moment. To call these moments conservatively would be to do it a disservice.

"It comes with the territory. People gave me a hard time and I understand that, I understand why," Diffey said. "It happened, and I owned it. I put my hand up, I made a statement on social media, and said I got it wrong. I said I should not have been so bold, I have learned from it and we move on. I have many more years of great races to call ahead. The other races in the Olympics after that were proof of that and Saturday at Daytona was further proof of that. I am the one who has to live with it. I can prove to the viewing public and to myself that I have got over that by just continuing to improve and do good calls in the future."

The internet's response to Diffey's Daytona call is the other side of the coin. Racers, fans, and fellow reporters leapt to congratulate Diffey on his excellent call. That, Diffey says, is why he stays online to experience the good with the community in the moment.

"There are a lot of good people out there who want to share their thoughts and their feelings. I think we have to balance that through all of the negativity and toxicity that exists on social media; there are a lot of good people. I have been really taken aback by the extremely generous comments and supportive comments. There are a lot of good people in the world and I think we tend to focus on the wrong people."

Diffey will call his first regular-season finale for NASCAR this weekend when the series races at Darlington for the Southern 500. Currently, the three non-winners in the top 16 are Martin Truex Jr., Ty Gibbs, and Chris Buescher, with Bubba Wallace, Ross Chastain, and Kyle Busch on the outside looking in. These drivers will be determined to punch their way in, and Diffey will help both diehard fans and casual viewers understand the excitement throughout the race.

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