It is promoted as NASCAR's second-tier circuit to the organization's top level Cup Series.
[3] It became the Late Model Sportsman Series in 1968, and soon featured races on larger tracks such as Daytona International Speedway.
[9][10] During the 2020 season, fields were temporarily increased to 40 cars again to accommodate part-time teams that were otherwise unable to qualify due to such sessions being canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was won by Martin Truex Jr. On August 4, 2007, the series held its second race outside the United States, at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec, another road course.
Fox Sports made a return to the series, airing the 2011 Bubba Burger 250 at Richmond on Speed Channel, as ESPN gave up its exclusive rights to the race because of programming conflicts.
On July 28, 2023, it was announced the Xfinity Series will move exclusively to The CW in 2025 as part of a seven-year deal.
It was then announced on April 11, 2024, that the move would begin a year early to broadcast the final eight races of the 2024 season.
The races are also shown on Fox Sports Latin America, some of them live and some tape-delayed depending on the network's schedule.
In 2012, Motors TV broadcasts all Xfinity races live, delayed and highlights, until 2018 when the channel ceased operations.
[17] In 2007, the NASCAR Cup Series began racing with the Car of Tomorrow, a radically new specification different from the NXS.
This loosely resulted in the new Nationwide Series car making its debut in the 2010 Subway Jalapeño 250 at Daytona International Speedway.
However, the champions from 2006 to 2010 were all Cup regulars driving the full series schedule (Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, and Brad Keselowski).
On October 26, 2016, NASCAR announced plans to limit Cup participation in the lower series starting in 2017.
[18] In the early 1980s, teams were switching from the General Motors 1971–77 X-Body compact cars with 311-cubic inch engines.
The body style changes, as well as the introduction of V-8s, made the two series' cars increasingly similar.
The suspensions, brake systems, transmissions, were identical between the two series, but The Car of Tomorrow eliminates some of these commonalities.
NASCAR conducted a three-race test of unleaded gasoline in this series that began on July 29, 2006, with a race at Gateway International Raceway.
Another distinction between the cars started in 2008: Goodyear had developed a rain tire for NASCAR road course racing in both series but NASCAR had yet to use them under race conditions by the time NASCAR abandoned the program for the Cup Series in 2005 (the Cup Series eventually used rain tires at the 2020 Bank of America Roval 400 and 2021 Texas Grand Prix), but the Busch Series continued to use rain tires in races at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, since the races could not be planned with rain dates.
The then Nationwide Series unveiled its "Car of Tomorrow" (CoT) at the July 2010 race at Daytona International Speedway.
The change to share the same CoT chassis as the Cup series resulted in the wheelbase being lengthened from 105 to 110 inches[22][23][24] Each manufacturer uses a distinct body design (similar to 1960s muscle cars), built within strict aerodynamic guidelines provided by NASCAR.
The Chevrolet car body currently resembles the Camaro SS, after initially running the Impala and then the Zeta-based Camaro (which coincided with GM's Cup car being its four-door Zeta counterpart, the Holden VF Commodore based Chevrolet SS, being used in Cup at the time).
[26][27] As a result of a rules change after the 2018 season, all Challenger chassis were rendered ineligible for competition, as the series made the switch to composite body panels.
Since FCA had pulled factory support years earlier, no new body was submitted for competition, ending the possibility of running a Challenger chassis in the series.
[28] All figures correct as of the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway (November 9, 2024).
Green 2001 K. Harvick 2002 G. Biffle 2003 B. Vickers 2004 M. Truex Jr. 2005 M. Truex Jr. 2006 K. Harvick 2007 C. Edwards 2008 C. Bowyer 2009 Ky. Busch 2010 B. Keselowski 2011 R. Stenhouse Jr. 2012 R. Stenhouse Jr. 2013 A. Dillon 2014 C. Elliott 2015 C. Buescher 2016 D. Suárez 2017 W. Byron 2018 T. Reddick 2019 T. Reddick 2020 A. Cindric 2021 D. Hemric 2022 T. Gibbs 2023 C. Custer 2024 J. Allgaier