NBC Sports begins its lighter portion of the NASCAR schedule this weekend at a sold-out Iowa Speedway, and it has a new theme it will carry throughout the rest of the season, focusing on driver toughness. The sports arm owned by NBCUniversal is the latest spin-off four media rights partners who form a relay during the 10-month NASCAR season which begins with Fox Sports in February.
But while this weekend’s Iowa Corn 350 on USA Network is the first major series race in 2025 on an NBCUniversal channel, it will actually be the sixth to land under the belt of NBC Sports’ NASCAR production team. Indeed, Amazon hired NBC Sports to produce the green flag to checkered flag portions of Prime Video’s five Cup Series broadcasts this summer. Prime is one of three new media partners for NASCAR this year, with The CW carrying the entire secondary series season and WBD’s TNT, TruTV and Max having just completed five. NASCAR now receives $1.1 billion in annual licensing fees between the five.
From Iowa, NBC will open a new broadcast of this year’s races to the tune of “Space Truckin'” by the English rock band Deep Purple. The intro is two minutes long and filled with gruesome racing scenes like flips and crashes, as well as clips from a creative shoot NBC did this year with the Cup Series drivers.
Scenes from the filming include drivers hanging out in a bar drinking beers, playing pool, playing cards, playing jukeboxes, and working on streetcars outside. The clips from the actual races are both recent and include historic moments from decades past. They show pit crews changing tires with natural sound, drivers mashing the gearbox to downshift before a corner, and Richard Petty signing autographs. Drivers featured during the creative shoot include Petty, Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin, Shane van Gisbergen, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney, among others.
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Versant Exec producer Jeff Behnke said the motivation for this year’s theme came from NBC NASCAR racing analyst Jeff Burton as the two had a conversation. This year’s race booth will once again be Burton and Steve Letarte as analysts and Leigh Diffey doing the play-by-play, after Diffey replaced Rick Allen midway through the NBC campaign last year..
Versant is the new independent media company that will spin out of Comcast in late 2025 with cable and digital assets, including USA Network.
Describing the theme, Behnke said: “Burton talked about how tough these drivers are and you always hear the term, ‘Oh, they’re going 200 miles an hour.’ But there are so many tracks – there are short tracks that we do in our program, Bristol, Richmond and Martinsville and even the road races – and these drivers are tough, serious and they are in incredible physical shape, and we are going to celebrate that. You will see this in our opening and in our video theme which will be woven throughout the races. … As Burton was telling me, the way their bodies are impacted during a race – not just in crashes – but during a race and the heat that they overcome and the strength it takes to turn those wheels, we’re going to celebrate that and highlight that, and that’s our undercurrent. The main thing we’re really ready for is the playoffs and the championship race.
This weekend will mark NBC Sports’ 200th broadcast of the NASCAR race since it began broadcasting the sport again in 2015. Driver Bubba Wallace wins the Brickyard 400 last weekendits first in 100 races, serves as a nice springboard for NBC, according to Behnke, and NBC has already cut scenes of Wallace kissing the bricks and included in the open broadcast. To that end, it’s an indicator of what Behnke said is an effort to continually update the open show throughout the season with new scenes.
Other highlights from NBC heading into this weekend include the network’s update of its Peacock Pitbox, which is a structure that teams typically use during races for their pit crews and which for years has morphed into a sort of pre/post-race studio. This season, the stand will feature LED lights and screens that can display everything from announcer logos to track layouts and driver images. There will also be a “patio” under the stand this year that NBC will use for demonstrations. NBC Sports was the first in NASCAR to experiment last year by having some races only air commercials when there was no live action at the track, and that will continue this year at Daytona on August 23 and Talladega on October 19.
