ABC's involvement with NASCAR dates to the 1960s, when the network's Wide World of Sports program featured select marquee events, including portions of the Daytona 500. Coverage during this era was limited in scope, with ABC typically airing delayed or partial broadcasts of the most prominent races rather than live flag-to-flag programming. The network's approach through the 1970s and into the 1980s relied heavily on tape delay, with commentary recorded in post-production rather than delivered live.
A defining moment in this early period came in 1976, when ABC broadcast the Daytona 500 opening laps, departed for Olympic coverage, then returned for a dramatic finish in which David Pearson and Richard Petty slid across the finish line side by side. The live race television rights for the Daytona 500 moved to CBS Sports in 1979, a network credited with pioneering live flag-to-flag NASCAR coverage.
When ESPN launched its NASCAR coverage in 1981 with a race at North Carolina Speedway, ABC became the over-the-air complement to the cable network's growing portfolio of stock car events. For the ESPN family of networks — which included ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC — this arrangement persisted through 2000. During this period, the broadcast division handled events that benefited from broader over-the-air distribution, while ESPN and ESPN2 carried the volume of weekly coverage. ESPN's final race before the first departure from NASCAR was the 2000 NAPA 500 in Atlanta, after which Fox, FX, NBC, and TNT took over Cup and Busch Series rights from 2001 through 2006.
ESPN and ABC returned to NASCAR in 2007 after NBC Sports dropped its contract at the end of the 2006 season. ABC's Sprint Cup races in 2007 began with the Sam's Town 300 at Las Vegas on March 10, while ESPN handled the Brickyard 400 in July as the first Cup event back on the network. The final ten races of the 2007 season — the Chase for the Nextel Cup — aired on ABC.
Over the 2007–2014 run, the pre-race program NASCAR Countdown anchored each broadcast, typically hosted from a technologically advanced 78,000-pound mobile pit studio that could be elevated 14 feet above track level with 30 feet of glass panels allowing hosts and fans to observe the racing surface. Nicole Briscoe became the established weekend host, joined by analysts Brad Daugherty and Rusty Wallace.
The arrangement shifted further toward ESPN as the primary home beginning in 2010, when NASCAR moved most Sprint Cup Chase races from ABC to the cable network. ABC retained a reduced portfolio of race dates, including Saturday night events at Bristol and select marquee weekends.
The final race under the ESPN–ABC NASCAR contract was the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 16, 2014, with Kevin Harvick clinching that year's Sprint Cup Series championship. Allen Bestwick, who had served as the lead lap-by-lap announcer for Sprint Cup races since 2011, called the final broadcast. In his closing sign-off, Bestwick paid tribute to the broadcast lineage across nearly three decades of network and cable coverage.
The ESPN–ABC partnership spanned more than 265 Cup telecasts across its various stints, encompassing the Nationwide Series and Craftsman Truck Series at different points. Criticisms during the 2007–2014 return included excessive commercial interruptions, broadcast preemptions due to college football and other sports commitments, and a perceived editorial focus on championship contenders to the exclusion of the broader race field. Despite these tensions, the partnership constituted a foundational chapter in the growth of NASCAR as a nationally televised sport, helping establish stock car racing alongside the major league team sports on American broadcast television.