Prior to the original 1999 contract between NASCAR and NBC, the network aired races such as the
National 500 at
Charlotte Motor Speedway from
1979 to
1981, the 1981
Mountain Dew 500 at
Pocono International Raceway, the
Winston 500 at
Alabama International Motor Speedway from
1983 to
1985, and the
Miami 300 and
Pennzoil 400 at
Homestead-Miami Speedway in both
1999 and
2000. During the 1970s and 1980s, NBC often pre-recorded coverage of NASCAR races, with the edited broadcasts airing as part of the network's sports
anthology series Sportsworld.
Original run (2001–2006) Background On November 11, 1999, NASCAR signed a five-year,
US$2.48 billion contract which split the American television rights for NASCAR races between
Fox, its cable partner
FX,
NBC and
Turner Sports. The contract began in 2001 and went as follows. • Fox and FX would air races in the first half of the season, with their slate of events coming to an end with the
Sonoma event most years. • NBC would partner with
TBS, Turner's long time home for NASCAR, and cover the remainder of the season beginning with the July races. • As part of the contract, the
Daytona 500 would be shared between Fox and NBC. Fox had the rights to the race, as well as the
Budweiser Shootout, the Busch Series event, and all qualifying events including the
qualifying races, in odd numbered years while NBC would air those events in even numbered years. The network that did not air the Daytona 500 would instead air the
Pepsi 400. As 2001 began, however, Turner Sports decided to make a change to its broadcast arrangement. At the time,
Turner Broadcasting was in the midst of a format change for its cable channel
TNT that was to make it a drama-centric network. To keep with the branding the network took on, "We Know Drama", Turner Sports decided to make TNT be NBC's cable partner and end the seventeen-year relationship TBS had with NASCAR. The initial NBC/TNT broadcast team consisted of
Allen Bestwick on play-by-play. Bestwick had been tabbed by NBC for its coverage of the first two Cup Series race weekends held at
Homestead-Miami Speedway, and had been the lead broadcaster for TBS for the last two years. NBC signed
Benny Parsons away from ESPN to serve as lead analyst, and later added former driver
Wally Dallenbach Jr. after Dallenbach stepped away from full-time competition following the 2000 season. The lead pit road reporter was
Bill Weber, formerly of ESPN. He was joined by fellow ESPN alumni Dave Burns and
Matt Yocum, the latter of whom also signed on for Fox’s coverage, and
CNNSI motorsports reporter Marty Snider. In 2006, NBC moved the conclusion of Daytona 500 qualifying to FOX-owned SPEED at 3pm Eastern Time, with NBC graphics and commentary retained. The move was due to conflicts with the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. The postponed Budweiser Shootout was then seen on TNT. It would be the only time that NBC/TNT would carry it's NASCAR coverage on SPEED.
Regular segments Some of the regular features of NBC's race coverage were: • The
Aflac Trivia Question, which
Benny Parsons always introduced by saying "cue the
duck". • "Wally's World", where Wally Dallenbach would take a lap around the race track. In the earliest form, the segment was an analysis segment where Dallenbach told the viewers what the drivers could expect. Later, he would conduct an interview with a celebrity guest who took the ride with him. • “Dave Discovers”, in which pit reporter
Dave Burns would provide some trivia related to the track, or take part in activities, such as bowling on the high banks of Bristol, or fishing out Wally’s driver signature from a pond at Darlington. • “Golden Benny Awards”, where Benny Parsons would hand out the “Golden Benny” to someone in the NASCAR community. The segment was retired after the Golden Benny was possessed by “a demon”, and it was destroyed with a hammer by crew chief
Frank Stoddard. During the broadcasts' opening sequence later in the run of the initial contract, a driver can be heard shouting over his radio, "Good job guys, good job." The audio for this clip was taken from
Rusty Wallace after his win during the spring 2004 race at
Martinsville Speedway.
Music The
Metallica song "
Fuel" was used as the theme song for NBC and
TNT's NASCAR broadcasts from mid-2001 to the 2003 season, and was also used for the
2004 Daytona 500 (which aired on NBC), with the song's instrumental backing used as background music and commercial bumpers. However, for part of the
2001 season, the opening scream used in the opening was removed because of its close association with terrorists in the wake of the
September 11 attacks. The use of a
heavy metal song was intended by producer Sam Flood to create a "rock-and-roll feel, musically, setting the tone for telecasts." The pre-release version of the song entitled "Fuel For Fire" (with different lyrics) was released as part of the
NASCAR Full Throttle CD.
NASCAR leaves NBC In October 2005, NBC announced that it might not renew its contract end of the NASCAR contract after the
2006 season, largely because of its acquisition of the
Sunday Night Football telecast from
ESPN. The restructured broadcast deal awarded Fox the rights to the Daytona 500 from
2007 until 2014. The contract also allowed
ESPN and
ABC to regain NASCAR rights, taking the second half of the season's races; meanwhile, TNT retained its broadcast rights and signed a contract to air six mid-season races. The ESPN family of networks became the exclusive home of the
NASCAR Busch/Nationwide Series as part of the contract, replacing TNT, NBC, Fox and FX as broadcasters. As the NFL and NASCAR contracts overlapped during the
2006 Chase for the Nextel Cup, some of NBC's post-race shows were moved to
CNBC in order to allow the broadcast network's
NFL pre-game show
Football Night in America to start on time.
NASCAR returns to NBC On July 23, 2013, NASCAR announced a nine-year contract with NBC Sports to broadcast the final 20 races of the
NASCAR Cup Series season (from the
Coke Zero Sugar 400 at
Daytona International Speedway through the
Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead from 2015 to 2017; in
2018 and
2019, NBC's coverage started at
Chicagoland and ended at Homestead and since 2020 starts in Chicagoland and ends at Phoenix), the final 19 races of the
Xfinity Series season, along with coverage of select
regional series events and the
NASCAR Mexico Series, succeeding both former partners TNT and ESPN. The deal also awarded NBC Sports the rights to provide coverage on digital platforms, rights to Spanish-language coverage for
Telemundo and mun2 (now
Universo), broadcast rights to the
NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony and post-season awards banquets. The deal runs from 2015 to 2024, although the Mexico Series race at
Phoenix International Raceway began in 2014. The majority of NBC's NASCAR coverage under the new contract will air on
NBCSN (which was swapped to the USA Network after the former network's closure), however seven (ten in 2023 and 2024) races will be broadcast by the NBC broadcast network; in 2015 and 2016, they were the
Coke Zero Sugar 400, the
Bojangles' Southern 500 at
Darlington, the Chase races at
Charlotte and
Kansas, and the last three races (
Texas, Phoenix and Homestead-Miami) consecutively. NBC Sports took over the portion of the contract previously held by ESPN and Turner Sports. While financial details were not disclosed, NBC reportedly paid 50% more than the $2.7 billion paid by ESPN and Turner combined under the previous contract. Former Turner Sports executive Jeff Behnke serves as vice president of NASCAR programming for NBC Sports. On February 3, 2015, NBC Sports announced an agreement to air 39 regional series races from the
ARCA Menards Series East and
West,
Whelen Modified Tour and
Whelen Southern Modified Tour on NBCSN. The first U.S.-series race under the contract was
The Hart to Heart Breast Cancer Foundation 150—the first race of the
2015 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East season—at
New Smyrna Speedway, and was aired on February 19 on
NBCSN. During
Summer Olympic years (three during the contract, in
2016,
2021, and
2024), NBC will assign different NBCUniversal channels to air races as a result of scheduling conflicts. For 2016,
CNBC (used for
English Premier League,
IndyCar, and
Formula One for NBCSN conflicts) carried Sprint Cup and Xfinity qualifying along with one Xfinity race, and
USA Network (which will also be used for Premier League conflicts) carried two Xfinity and
one Sprint Cup race. In 2021, the Cup Series schedule took two weeks off from competition to minimize any conflict with the Olympics; the Watkins Glen race ran on the day of the Games' closing ceremony. The one Xfinity Series race that occurred during the Games (at Watkins Glen) aired on CNBC, in 2024 the cup series once again took two weeks off to minimize conflict with the games and aired
a Cup Series race on USA Network during the closing ceremony of the games, however the Xfinity series will also do the same for three weeks, with no races of any NASCAR series airing during the Olympics. If a NASCAR race is postponed to Monday and it conflicts with an
English Premier League match, the race will move to USA (CNBC is also unavailable on weekdays due to its stock market coverage), though this has not happened yet as of the end of the 2020 season.
COVID-19 pandemic impact, NBCSN's closure and move to USA Sports In 2020, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the NBC team initially broadcast all races from the broadcast booth at
Charlotte Motor Speedway with only 2-3 pit reporters onsite. Although NBC has a small studio in Charlotte for
NASCAR America segments, the studio was deemed too small to be able to do race broadcasts and maintain social distancing. For the Indianapolis race weekend,
Mike Tirico hosted from the track; Tirico lives close enough to Indianapolis he was able to drive to the track to host. For the final 5 races of the season (starting with the Charlotte Roval Race) the NBC on-air team resumed travel to race sites.
NASCAR America stopped airing when the pandemic began and has not yet returned to air. NBC has cited other conflicting live events as the reason the program has not returned to air; NBCSN aired the
2020 Stanley Cup playoffs throughout the show's timeslot in July and August. The show now airs only as a pre-race & post-race show with some airings on Peacock. On January 22, 2021, an internal memo sent by NBC Sports president Pete Bevacqua announced that NBCSN would cease operations by the end of the year, and that
USA Network would begin "carrying and/or simulcasting certain NBC Sports programming," including the
Stanley Cup playoffs and NASCAR races, before NBCSN's shutdown.
Peacock, NBCUniversal's new streaming service, would also carry some of the network's former programming starting in 2022. The move was cited by industry analysts as a response to the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic on the
sports and
television industries, the acceleration of
cord-cutting, as well as formidable competition from rival sports networks such as
ESPN and
Fox Sports 1. On November 29, 2023, NBC extended its contract through 2031; beginning in the 2025 season, NBC's coverage was significantly reduced, consisting of only the final 14 races of the Cup Series season. The rights to the Xfinity Series moved exclusively to
The CW. On April 11, 2024, as part of a sublicensing agreement serving as a prelude to the new contract, it was announced that the final eight races of the
2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series would be moved to The CW, with NBC Sports producing the broadcasts. On November 12, 2025, it was announced that
USA Sports, formed after NBCUniversal
spun off most of their cable business as
Versant, would receive NBC's portion of the Cup Series schedule beginning in 2026. For that year, USA would air 10 of the races, while the broadcasts for the summer Daytona race and the final three races of the season, including the Cup Series Championship, would still air on NBC but be produced by USA Sports.
Commentators On December 3, 2013,
Jeff Burton was confirmed as the first member of the broadcast team and is one of the color commentators. On December 4, 2013,
Rick Allen, who previously worked at Fox Sports as an announcer for its
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series coverage as well as for several
Xfinity Series races, signed a multi-year contract to serve as the lead announcer for NBC's race broadcasts, a position he held until Michigan in August 2024. On January 9, 2014, it was confirmed that
Steve Letarte would leave his role as
Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s crew chief at
Hendrick Motorsports and join NBC Sports as a color analyst. Behnke explained that the on-air makeup of NBC Sports' broadcasts would have "a relevancy that hasn't been seen in a long, long time", citing the recent involvements of both Burton and Letarte in NASCAR prior to their move to broadcasting. The pre-race show was hosted by former Fox reporter
Krista Voda along with former ESPN analyst
Dale Jarrett, former TNT analyst
Kyle Petty, and
Top Gear host
Rutledge Wood. On April 15, 2015, it was announced that
Ralph Sheheen and
Ray Evernham would be part of the booth of the NBCSN telecasts of the Whelen Modified Tour and Whelen Southern Modified Tour. On September 1, 2015, it was announced that
Ken Squier and
Ned Jarrett would commentate a portion of the
2015 Bojangles' Southern 500 along with current
NASCAR on NBC commentator Dale Jarrett. Squier was also in the broadcast booth for Sprint Cup Series final practice. This has become a standard tradition at the Southern 500, due to NASCAR designating the race as a throwback weekend where teams bring retro paint schemes to the track. On September 11, 2015, it was announced that
Carl Edwards would be in the NBCSN broadcast booth as a guest analyst for the Xfinity race at
Richmond alongside Dale Jarrett and Diffey.
Jamie McMurray was a guest analyst for the NXS race at Chicagoland. On July 24, 2017, it was announced that
Dale Earnhardt Jr. would join the
NASCAR on NBC broadcasting team for the 2018 season, incidentally reuniting with his former crew chief Letarte. In November 2017, it was announced that
Bob Costas would co-anchor NBC's pre-race coverage leading into the
NASCAR Cup Series finale from
Homestead. alongside
Krista Voda, Similarly, in the 2018 Cup race at Daytona, NBC's
Mike Tirico appeared on the pre-race show. In July 2019, it was announced that
Danielle Trotta will join NBC Sports’ NASCAR coverage as host of the “Victory Lap” post-race show for select Cup Series races this year. On July 28, 2020, it was announced that
Brad Daugherty would be an analyst for
NASCAR on NBC from the first
Michigan International Speedway race onwards. At the conclusion of the 2020 season, Krista Voda revealed on social media she would not be returning to NBC. Voda stated NBC had elected to eliminate her position from race broadcasts. On February 29, 2024,
The Athletic reported that
Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose contract with NBC expired after the 2023 season, would reportedly be leaving NBC for Amazon and TNT's new NASCAR coverage in the next TV contract that starts in 2025. On May 14, 2024, it was officially announced that
Jimmie Johnson would join the
NASCAR on NBC team as a color commentator for two races in 2024. However, he ended up being a studio analyst from the NBC Peacock Pit Box for those races instead of in the booth.
Music and graphics While Fox Sports innovated the practice of using the team's number fonts (such as the Petty #43 or Jeff Gordon's #24) in their on-screen graphics, NBC took the next step by using these fonts in the running order graphic at the top of the screen, starting with the
2001 Pepsi 400. This was only used for Winston Cup broadcasts on NBC, while TNT races and all Busch Series races (regardless of network) used a generic font with a blue background. This practice was dropped after the
inaugural race at Kansas, and starting at
Charlotte all then-Winston Cup Series broadcasts used a generic font in the running order with a limited number of background colors to roughly correspond with the car. The accurate colors and fonts returned when NBC's coverage resumed in 2015, and by then this had become common practice for most TV networks for major auto racing series. In 2018, a new secondary leaderboard graphic was introduced and is displayed vertically on the left side of the screen, essentially the same thing as the graphic introduced in
Fox’s coverage earlier that year. However, unlike with Fox, NBC only used this leaderboard during portions of the race depending on the camera angles and picture or if they wanted to show more of the field on the leaderboard (up to 20 cars) at a time (with the leaderboard on the top of the screen, NBC only shows four cars at a time), whereas Fox used it for the entire race regardless of camera angles and picture (as of 2025, the latter of which is now also used by NBC). From 2015–17, the intro for the revived run of
NASCAR on NBC was "
Bringing Back the Sunshine" performed by
country music artist
Blake Shelton, who is also one of the coaches on NBC's own prime time hit show,
The Voice. NBC introduced a new opening for their coverage starting in 2018, using a cover version of the
Tom Petty song "
Runnin' Down a Dream", done by
ZZ Ward. No theme was used in 2020; the theme was accompanied by a video featuring fans, NBC executives cited that airing the theme when there were no fans in attendance at races would be inappropriate. In 2021, singer
Marcus King used his song "The Well" for the new opening theme song. In 2023 and 2024, "Woohoo" by Jordan Baum was used as the intro song, but for the
NASCAR Cup Series in 2024, it was
Highway Star by
Deep Purple and was only used 3 times that year. NBC's
peacock logo bug turns green, yellow, red, or white when the respective
racing flag is deployed. (This feature is absent on USA Network). This feature was removed in 2025. Starting with the Cup Series race in Iowa, which aired on USA Network on August 3, 2025, NBC debuted a new dedicated graphics package specific to its NASCAR coverage. This was the first time NBC had updated its graphics since the aforementioned resumption of the network's NASCAR coverage a decade earlier. With this change, both of the NASCAR Cup Series major broadcast network partners (Fox and NBC) now use dedicated graphics packages (Fox debuted theirs in 2022). ==On-air staff==