The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series regular season came to an end this past Saturday night with the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway, a race won by RFK Racing's Ryan Preece to lock himself into the playoffs over Trackhouse Racing's Shane van Gisbergen.
This race was the fourth on the calendar since the switch from TNT Sports' portion of the broadcast schedule to USA Sports' portion. The current portion was previously dubbed NBC Sports' portion, but Versant Media, the parent company of USA Sports, split from Comcast and NBC in late 2025. USA Sports is aiming to establish its brand as its own entity.
What did not change is the fact that, of the 14 races during USA Sports' portion of the schedule, 10 were scheduled for USA Network and the other four were scheduled for NBC.
And after USA Network opened things up with three consecutive races at Iowa Speedway, Richmond Raceway, and New Hampshire Motor Speedway, NBC aired its first race of the year from Daytona this past weekend.
However, that race will be the only race on NBC for nearly two months.
No more NASCAR Cup races on NBC until late October
The first seven races of the 10-race "Chase" postseason are set to be shown live on USA Network. Those races are scheduled to take place at Darlington Raceway, World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, and Phoenix Raceway.
The next race set to be shown live on NBC is the antepenultimate race of the season at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, October 25, and that race is set to kick off a stretch of three in a row on NBC to conclude the season. The following Sunday's race at Martinsville Speedway is also set to be shown live on NBC, as is the next weekend's season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Regardless of whether a race is shown live on USA Network or NBC, the broadcast booth remains the same, with Leigh Diffey now in his third season calling the action alongside analysts Steve Letarte and Jeff Burton, both of whom are in their 12th seasons.
The season-ending portion of the broadcast schedule was reduced from 20 races to 14 ahead of the 2025 season, as a result of the inclusion of both Amazon Prime Video and TNT in the new seven-year, $7.7 billion media rights deal for five races each. Likewise, Fox's season-opening portion dropped from 18 races (16 points races) to 14 (12).
Tune in to USA Network this Sunday, September 6 at 5:00 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the Cook Out Southern 500 from Darlington Raceway to open up the playoffs.
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