[12] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

[26] 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.

[31][32] 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.

[35] 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.

The pit reporters for 2018 consisted of Dave Burns, Marty Snider, Kelli Stavast, Parker Kligerman (who replaced Mike Massaro following the 2016 season), and Ralph Sheheen, Burns and Snider were with NBC's original NASCAR pit crew, while Massaro joins from ESPN's NASCAR team and Stavast from the network's sports car coverage.

[42] 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.

[44] 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.

[45] 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.

[47] 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.

This practice was dropped after the inaugural race at Kansas, and starting at Charlotte all Winston Cup 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.

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.

In 2023 & 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 in 2024 NBC's peacock logo bug turns green, yellow, red, or white when the respective racing flag is deployed.