NASCAR on NBC (visually branded as NBC NASCAR in logos shown within on-air graphics and network promotions) is the branding used for broadcasts of NASCAR races that are produced by USA Sports, and televised on the NBC broadcast network and Peacock streaming service in the United States. NBC originally aired races, typically during the second half of the season, from November 13, 1999 to November 19, 2006.
On July 23, 2013, NBC signed a new agreement with NASCAR to obtain the rights to races from the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series, ARCA Menards Series East, ARCA Menards Series West and NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour seasons starting in 2015. In addition, NBC Universal also gained the rights to the NASCAR Toyota Series starting in 2014, airing on its Spanish-language network channels initially for selected races, with NBC obtaining Spanish-language rights to all NASCAR series starting in 2015. In 2023, NBC signed a new 7 year agreement effective in 2025 to broadcast the last 14 NASCAR Cup Series races of the season. Beginning in 2026, all 14 races will be produced as part of NASCAR on USA Sports, following the formation of Versant, formed after a spin-off of most of NBCUniversal's cable channels, of which NBC will broadcast only 4 races.
History 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.
NBC began to lead into its new contract in February 2014 with the premiere of a nightly news and analysis program, NASCAR America, on NBCSN, and a broadcast of the Toyota 120 from Phoenix International Raceway – the opening event of the 2014 season of the NASCAR Toyota Series, on mun2.
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 and post-race show with some airings on Peacock.