Announcer says accent cost him job opportunity

There are several things NASCAR fans immediately notice about new NBC announcer Leigh Diffey.

He’s enthusiastic. He knows motorsports. He is good at his job.

And, yes, the Australian-American has an accent.

Diffey assumed play-by-play duties for NASCAR Cup Series events in August, replacing Rick Allen in the NBC booth. While he’s just three races into his NASCAR role, he brings years of motorsports experience, most notably with NBC’s IndyCar coverage.

The 53-year-old Diffey got tested right away. Here he is calling the finish of his first race, as Harrison Burton won at Daytona to earn his first NASCAR Cup Series victory.

Diffey has seemed like such a natural, some are wondering why he never got a shot at a top announcer role before. Turns out, he apparently did, with TNT. But as Diffey tells the story, a network executive rejected him because of his accent.

During an appearance on the Off Track with Hinch and Rossi podcast, Diffey recalled how he auditioned to be the lead play-by-play man on TNT.

“I had a chance to audition for a NASCAR play-by-play job on Turner,” Diffey recalled. “So I went and did that audition. … It was myself, Adam Alexander and Rick Allen. Wally Dallenbach was there, Kyle Petty was there, Larry McReynolds was there — it was a full-on audition. We had to call the Homestead championship finale from the year before.”

Diffey was stunned by the elaborate audition.

“It was way more than I had ever imagined or given it credit for,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m just going to come in do like five minutes of commentary. They had their full production team there. … They made me call about 150 laps.

“Anyway, it went really, really well.”

Yet Diffey didn’t get the job.

“I learned many years later, that um … how do I say this politely? I think that I did get the job, but ultimately I didn’t get the job, because the big, big boss at Turner didn’t prefer to have an accent calling the Cup races,” Diffey concluded.

Despite that reported snub, Diffey has stayed plenty busy in recent years. Most recently, he was one of NBC’s most notable voices at the Paris Olympics with some spectacular calls, along with one infamous call in the men’s 100-meter final .

[Off Track with Hinch and Rossi]

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