ABC, and later the ESPN family of networks, carried NASCAR events from the sanctioning body's top three divisions at various points from the early 1960s until 2000, after the Truck Series rights were lost.

ESPN's final race was the Ford EcoBoost 400 at the Homestead–Miami Speedway on November 16, 2014, with Kevin Harvick winning that year's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

The last of its 265 Cup telecasts (that number includes some on ABC Sports) was the 2000 NAPA 500 in Atlanta (now the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500).

The TV show promo of NASCAR on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC in 2007 can be seen as a sneak peek in the 2006 Disney/Pixar animated film Cars on DVD and VHS in the 2.39:1 widescreen and 1.33:1 fullscreen versions.

In addition to the races, ESPN2 aired a daily show called NASCAR Now, which was similar to Baseball Tonight and NFL Primetime.

The initial broadcast team consisted of Jerry Punch as the lead announcer with Wallace and Andy Petree as analysts.

Dale Jarrett, who had retired during the 2008 season and had worked part-time for the network afterward, joined Punch and Petree as booth analyst.

The panelists rotate and have included Mike Massaro, Johnny Benson, Boris Said, Ray Evernham, and Ricky Craven.

Beginning with the 2010 season, ESPN carried fourteen of the seventeen races, including the entire Chase for the Sprint Cup except for the Bank of America 500 which continued to be televised on ABC.

This led to consternation among ABC's Southern affiliates, who counted on the races as a bulwark against NFL games on competing CBS and Fox stations.

Andy Petree and Dale Jarrett returned as color commentators, while Punch moved to lead pit reporter.

Allen Bestwick, who served as lap-by-lap announcer for ESPN's Sprint Cup Series races since 2011, worked his final NASCAR broadcast on network television, marking the end of his role with the network in 29 years covering the sport and remained with ESPN and ABC covering IndyCar races from 2015 to 2018.

Using a mobile pit studio similar to FOX's Hollywood Hotel, the pre-race was typically led by host Nicole Briscoe with Brad Daugherty and Rusty Wallace.

At the Bashas' Supermarkets 200 at Phoenix International Raceway on April 20, 2007, NASCAR on ESPN unveiled a new feature, "Full Throttle".

In this feature, which took place on one restart a race, the audio was provided by various team communications between drivers, crew chiefs, and spotters, similar to Fox's "Crank it Up".

Their biggest complaints were excessive commercials, bored announcers, abuse of production technology, and language that seemed to talk down to them.

On October 4, 2008, SportsCenter reported that the Roush-Fenway Racing trio of Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, and Greg Biffle were leading the championship standings.

[5] The many changes made in 2008, specifically the removal of on-air personalities with no previous NASCAR backgrounds and the reassignment of Wallace, may have come in response to these complaints.

The rule change itself proved ineffective at preventing car flips and accidents, as evidenced by Ryan Newman's blowover with five laps to go on the back straightaway, then Mark Martin's turnover in a crash in the tri-oval during the attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, and was quickly reversed before the 2010 season.

There were also changes in announcing and pit reporters, most notably the moving Jerry Punch to pit road and IndyCar and occasional Nationwide Series lead announcer Marty Reid to lead broadcaster for the majority of NASCAR broadcasts beginning in 2010, including the Sprint Cup races.

Allen Bestwick, formerly the lap-by-lap announcer for NBC's NASCAR coverage from 2001 to 2004, took over as lead broadcaster for Sprint Cup Series races in 2011.

Case in point: in the November 2009 race in Texas, the vast majority of the broadcast was spent talking about Jimmie Johnson despite the fact he crashed on lap 3 and finished 38th.

This, combined with the moving of the Brickyard 400, arguably NASCAR's second biggest race to ESPN, angered fans and sponsors.

In 2010, because of the movement of the Chase races to ESPN and the earlier standardized 1:00 PM ET start times instituted by NASCAR, ESPN moved NASCAR Countdown to ESPN2 for all Chase races starting at 1:00 PM ET to avoid shortening or moving its Sunday NFL Countdown program.

In order to reduce the workload of announcers during the first half of the season, ESPN constantly changed the lineup of those who covered the activities on the race track.

In the 2007 season, ESPN used three different lap-by-lap announcers (Punch, Marty Reid, and Allen Bestwick), four different color commentators (Wallace, Petree, Jarrett, and Randy LaJoie), ten different pit reporters (Jack Arute, Bestwick, Dave Burns, Gary Gerould, Jamie Little, Mike Massaro, Marty Smith, Spake, Johnson, and Vince Welch), six infield studio hosts (Musburger, Bestwick, Massaro, Chris Fowler, Erik Kuselias, and Suzy Kolber), and at least four infield studio analysts (Daugherty, Brewer, Wallace, and Ray Evernham).

Three times during the season, the network did not use an infield studio for NASCAR Countdown, during the split races (where Nextel Cup and Busch Series were in different venues during the same weekend).