NASCAR on TV in 2025 is much more changeable than it was in the past for the NASCAR Cup Series. Last year, we only had two TV partners in FOX Sports and NBC Sports. Now, we have four.
On Tuesday (May 6), Warner Bros. Discovery announced their on-air team for their five-race miniseries that starts at Atlanta Motor Speedway on June 28 on TNT and Max. For the most part, everyone involved will be familiar to you. They’ll just be in different places.
The broadcast booth is the only part of the broadcast that was already known. Warner Bros. Discovery announced the broadcast booth of Adam Alexander, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte for their five-race schedule back in November.
This will be the same booth that will handle Amazon Prime Video’s five races that start with the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 25. Because of that fact, the original announcement was made the same day that Amazon made their announcement.
Alexander is a regular presence on play-by-play this season, working as the play-by-play commentator for NASCAR Xfinity Series races on The CW. He has worked Cup races previously for TNT. As you may remember, he was the play-by-play commentator for TNT’s Summer Series from 2010-2014, serving as the permanent replacement for Bill Weber.
Earnhardt and Letarte have spent the majority of the last 15 years working together, first as driver and crew chief for Hendrick Motorsports, then with NBC Sports. At Charlotte, Earnhardt will return to the broadcast booth for the first time since Phoenix Raceway in 2023. At the time, Earnhardt’s overarching contract with NBC expired and the parties were unable to come to an agreement.
Letarte is still with NBC Sports and once Charlotte comes along, he’ll be on your television (or cell phone, computer, tablet, etc.) every weekend for the remainder of the 2025 season. This is Letarte’s 11th year in the broadcast booth after he left Earnhardt’s team at the end of 2014.
TNT’s portion of the season will coincide with the new NASCAR In-Season Challenge. Hard to imagine that it’s already been nearly a year since it was announced.
Also, knowing that Warner Bros. Discovery (via TNT and TBS) is one of the TV partners for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament through 2032, they would likely be the perfect partner for such a competition.
I would be more receptive to something along the lines of a mini-season for these races with a championship pot than a bracket challenge. If that were to happen, I could imagine it being like some of the mini-competitions that they’ve had in the ARCA Menards Series like the Sioux Chief Showdown on short tracks. You could still have the million smackers as a prize, but it would be a different way to earn it.
Despite my personal feelings on the bracket challenge, TNT is taking it seriously. All five races will be available in three different places live. The regular race broadcast will air live on TNT. Max will also have a feed for the regular broadcasts and will continue to have the NASCAR Driver Cam channels available each week. I provided a primer on NASCAR Driver Cam back in February.
The NASCAR In-Season Challenge will have a home on TruTV with the NASCAR In-Season Challenge Altcast. Here, there will be a race simulcast with Jeff Burton and Larry McReynolds. The official press release notes that the TruTV broadcast will “…take fans inside the individual driver bracket storylines each week.”
I’m not really sure how that would work as an alternate broadcast. It might work better as an alternate pre-race show.
In the pits, TNT will have Alan Cavanna, Marty Snider and Danielle Trotta providing coverage. It’s an interesting group.
Snider is the veteran of the bunch with more than 25 years’ worth of experience. He knows what’s up. Cavanna doesn’t have anywhere near the experience of Snider but did very well when given the chance to work primarily on NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series broadcasts for FOX Sports. FOX Sports dumping him from that role was a mistake.
In Trotta, you have someone that has worked around the sport for the vast majority of the last 15 years, but someone that has very little pit reporting experience for television. I think of her more as a studio host and radio personality. That said, Trotta is knowledgeable about the sport and a professional. She does have some sideline reporting experience, although racing is not football. Regardless, I think she’ll do fine.
There will be pre- and post-race coverage under the branding of NASCAR Nation. This should not be confused with another show called NASCAR Nation, a daily NASCAR show that aired on SPEED around 2004 that served as the successor show to the original Totally NASCAR.
NASCAR Nation will be at the track and hosted by Shannon Spake. Spake has been involved with NASCAR coverage on and off since 2006. Most recently, she has been hosting NASCAR Daily on NASCAR’s YouTube channel and NASCAR Inside the Playoffs, a weekly show on TruTV that would preview that weekend’s playoff race that aired last fall. She is also a sideline reporter for FanDuel Sports Network Southeast’s coverage of the Charlotte Hornets.
Joining Spake on NASCAR Nation will be Jamie McMurray and Parker Kligerman, who are already working together on NASCAR Xfinity Series broadcasts on The CW with Alexander. This will guarantee that all five of the Xfinity races during the TNT portion of the season will have the booth on-site, if for no other reason than it being really dumb to not do it knowing that everyone is going to be there.
Finally, we have Dylan Smith, often referred to as Mamba Smith, as a correspondent to B/R Racing. I suppose that they’ll have more content on there eventually, but nearly everything on the page consists of syndicated offerings from Motorsport.com and On3 right now. For a site that’s technically part of one of NASCAR’s TV partners, that’s rather sad.
He’ll be involved in the TNT broadcasts in some way, shape or form as well, but I really couldn’t tell you what that’s going to look like right now since the release did not go into very much detail. Perhaps he’ll be the lynchpin for bracket discussion on the regular race broadcasts. I think he’ll play some kind of role with the In-Season Challenge. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Overall, Warner Bros. Discovery has unveiled an on-air team that brings a lot of experience to the table. That said, if they had more than five races on their docket, I think the lineup might have looked a little different.
Booth-wise, they’re using the same booth that Amazon Prime Video will have for the five previous races. Commentary-wise, those races will likely sound the same as the Amazon races with the exception of the In-Season Challenge.
On paper, NASCAR Nation should be good. As we’ve seen on the Xfinity broadcasts, McMurray and Kligerman work well together. Spake will be back in a role similar to what she had with NASCAR RaceDay previously. I don’t have any worries here.
Pit reporting should be decent as well. When I saw that Trotta would be pit reporting and Spake would in the studio, the thought did go through my mind of swapping the two. Then again, Spake hasn’t worked as a pit reporter for more than a decade. Working the sidelines at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte is a far cry from pit road. It’s quieter there, for one. That said, I think Spake will be the backup pit reporter, ready to take over if something happens to either of the three regulars.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.