Papyrus rebuilt the underlying engine rather than iterating on the original's technology. The most significant advancement was hardware 3D acceleration: NASCAR Racing 2 supported 3Dfx Glide acceleration under DOS and Rendition VERITE under Windows, making it the first NASCAR game to take advantage of dedicated 3D graphics hardware. This gave the game a visual quality that distinguished it sharply from contemporary console and arcade racing titles. Physics and multiplayer networking were also substantially refined, building on the online racing infrastructure Papyrus had been developing since the original game's LAN support.
NASCAR Racing 2 served as the base game for NASCAR Racing Online Series (NROS), a pay-to-play online racing service hosted by TEN (Total Entertainment Network). NROS supported races of up to 22 drivers simultaneously. The service was announced on 3 December 1996, launched on 12 November 1997, and operated until 14 October 1999, when it was replaced by support for NASCAR Racing 3 on the WON.net platform. The 1999 Edition of the franchise also ran on NROS before the transition. These online services were pioneering examples of subscription-based competitive motorsport gaming years before the concept became mainstream.
Critical reception was strongly positive. GameSpot gave the game a 9.2 out of 10, describing it as "a completely professional game, both in its execution and in its dedication to the NASCAR tradition." Computer Gaming World awarded a perfect score of 100%, writing that NASCAR Racing 2 "continues down that near legendary road of glory" and that it would make it "impossible to go back once you've checked it out." Next Generation was somewhat more measured, giving it three stars and calling it "a solid example of what a racing game should be."
Awards followed. NASCAR Racing 2 won Computer Games Strategy Plus's 1996 Racing Simulation of the Year award. It was a runner-up for Computer Game Entertainment's 1996 Best Sports Game and a finalist for Computer Gaming World's 1996 Sports Game of the Year, though it won that magazine's Readers' Choice award in the sports category. PC Gamer UK named it the 42nd best computer game ever made in its 1997 rankings.
NASCAR Racing 2 was a significant commercial hit. PC Data ranked it the 19th best-selling computer game in the United States during the January–November 1998 tracking period. Combined with the first NASCAR Racing, the two titles shipped more than 2 million copies globally by March 1998. By 2004, NASCAR Racing 2 alone had reached global sales of 800,000 units — the second highest total of any Papyrus title at that point, behind only the original NASCAR Racing's 1 million-plus.
NASCAR Racing 2 deepened Papyrus's reputation as a studio that treated motorsport seriously, delivering both simulation fidelity and technical innovation. Its 3D acceleration support established a precedent for PC racing simulations adopting emerging GPU hardware early, a pattern that would continue through the studio's subsequent releases. The franchise it anchored — NASCAR Racing 3, the 1999 Edition, the 2002 Season, and the 2003 Season — sustained Papyrus commercially through the end of its independent existence in 2004. The physics engine lineage that began with the 1994 original and ran through NASCAR Racing 2 ultimately contributed to iRacing, the modern online sim racing platform built on Papyrus's final title by studio co-founder David Kaemmer.