Once again, Dale Jr. takes a hoopdie 88 car to a decent finish - despite a
chattering front right all weekend and a terrible "fuel only" pit call by his
CC.
Junior stays P5 in points. Congrats to Brian Vickers for the win.
ESPN and Turner Sports will be out of the NASCAR business after next season, ending associations with the sport that go back three decades. NASCAR plans to announce this afternoon a new rights deal with NBC for the second half of the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series seasons -- a package that previously had been held by ESPN. Beginning in 2015, NBC will share NASCAR coverage with Fox, which signed an extension with NASCAR last year. Financial terms of NBC's deal were not available, but sources familiar with it said it was as much as a 50% increase from what ESPN paid for the Sprint Cup series and half of the Nationwide Series. Turner's package of six Sprint Cup races, as well as the first half of the Nationwide Series, remain available, according to sources. Fox is considered a likely bidder for both those packages. Turner and ESPN, which are in the seventh year of eight-year agreements valued at $2.74B overall, had an exclusive negotiating window with NASCAR that ended July 14. When they did not finalize extensions, NASCAR turned to NBC. ESPN and Turner both were interested in keeping the rights, but were not willing to pay as much as NBC was offering, sources said. (full story at the Sports Business Daily)