NBC Sports is gearing up for its 2023 NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series coverage, which begins when the Cup Series hits Nashville Superspeedway June 25, in primetime at 7 p.m. ET on NBC. Highlighted by 10 Cup Series races on the NBC broadcast network, a total of 39 races (20 Cup, 19 Xfinity) will be presented live on NBC, USA Network and Peacock during the second half of the 2023 NASCAR season.
The much-anticipated inaugural running of the Chicago Street Race for the Cup Series will air on Sunday, July 2, at 5:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock, marking the broadcast network’s second consecutive race to start the 2023 campaign.
Both the Cup and Xfinity Series Chicago Street Races will be presented “Radio Style,” NBC Sports’ signature fan-favorite broadcast style with announcers positioned from vantage points around the racetrack featuring high-paced, around-the-horn commentary. Lead NASCAR race announcer Rick Allen and Daytona 500-winning crew chief Steve Letarte will be located in the main broadcast booth, with two-time Daytona 500 champion and NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., 21-time Cup Series race winner and “The Mayor” of NASCAR Jeff Burton, and veteran MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio announcer Mike Bagley located throughout the streets of Chicago.
Following are additional highlights from NBC Sports’ 2023 NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series schedule:
Below are NBC Sports’ 2023 NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series schedules featuring networks and race start times*:
*subject to change
Joe Gibbs Racing has sold a minority equity stake in the organization to Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and Arctos Partners, JGR announced Tuesday.
Josh Harris, the founder of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, is the head of the new ownership group for the NFL’s Washington Commanders, pending approval by team owners.
In a release, JGR announced it had “received a significant investment” for the minority stake in the team. Joe Gibbs Racing also stated Gibbs will become a limited partner in Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, pending approval by the NBA and NHL. Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment owns the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils.
“Josh Harris, David Blitzer and their entire team have a vision that has delivered winning franchises in basketball, hockey, soccer and youth sports. Their teams are among the most successful in their leagues in growing audience and sponsorship and their commitment to the communities they work in are unparalleled.  I am excited to join the HBSE family and to have their support in growing Joe Gibbs Racing,” said Joe Gibbs in a statement.
Said Harris: “In recent years I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know Coach Gibbs and am proud to count him as a trusted friend and advisor. Joe is a winner. First in football and then with Joe Gibbs Racing, he has led organizations that build winning cultures based on strong values and a deep commitment to family and faith. This investment and partnership aims to support his vision and allow Joe Gibbs Racing to continue its track record of excellence long into the future.”
Joe Gibbs Racing was founded in 1992. Its first win was the 1993 Daytona 500. The organization has 204 Cup wins and 197 Xfinity wins. JGR’s Cup drivers this season are Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Ty Gibbs.
Chase Briscoe will have a new crew chief this weekend at Nashville Superspeedway, part of a shuffle Stewart-Haas Racing announced Tuesday.
Richard Boswell, who won eight Xfinity races with Briscoe from 2018-20, will be reunited with Briscoe in the Cup Series. Boswell replaces John Klausmeier, who moves to SHR’s vehicle performance group.
Davin Restivo replaces Boswell as the crew chief for Riley Herbst in the Xfinity Series. Restivo has been the lead engineer for Aric Almirola‘s Cup team.
The change comes as Briscoe enters Sunday’s Cup race at Nashville Superspeedway (7 p.m. ET, NBC) 31st in points and needing a victory to make the playoffs for the second year in a row. Briscoe is so far in the standings after penalties that included the loss of 120 points for a counterfeit part found on his car after the Coca-Cola 600.
Briscoe has four top 10s in the first 16 races of the season. He has nine finishes of 20th or worse this season, including five of the last six points races.
“I feel like Chase just needs something different right now,” Greg Zipadelli, chief competition officer for Stewart-Haas Racing, told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday. “He needs someone to help him grow in a different way, help hold him a little more accountable, and Richard has done that in the past.
“When we first moved him over (to Cup), Chase, we contemplated whether we needed to move Richard with him just because they had a good relationship. Even Richard thought it would be a lot, a rookie driver and crew chief with this new car and things of that nature. We elected to do what we did. (Briscoe and Klausmeier) won last year. They made the (playoffs). They had a pretty solid year, had opportunities to win two or three other races. That’s all you can ask for.
“We didn’t start the year like we thought we should with them. We have great expectations for (Briscoe). We need to get him to living up to the expectations that I know that he’s capable of and he knows himself. Thought this was the perfect time to make some changes with the week off.”
Boswell has been a full-time crew chief in the Xfinity Series since 2019. He served as a crew chief in selected Xfinity races from 2016-18. He has been Herbst’s crew chief since 2021. Herbst is winless but has made the playoffs each of the past two seasons.
Boswell served as a Cup crew chief for two races with Clint Bowyer in 2017.
“He deserves the opportunity,” Zipadelli told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio about Boswell’s promotion to the Cup Series. “He’s been with us for a while. … He has been a huge part of our Xfinity program and where it is today. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if we would have been where we’re at. He’s kind of taken it on personally. He’s done a lot more than crew chief over there in the past.
“I like his leadership. He’s pretty disciplined and has his ways and holds everyone accountable around him, including Chase. Really looking forward to getting them a few weeks under their belt and seeing if we can’t make some progress there.”
Ten races remain until the Cup playoffs begin, putting the focus on those who need a victory to secure a playoff spot.
Dr. Diandra examined the best chance for several Cup drivers to win a race before the playoffs begin. You can read those here and here.
With the NASCAR Cup Series off last weekend, the NBC Sports NASCAR Power Rankings features the top 10 winless drivers in Cup heading into Sunday’s race at Nashville Superspeedway (7 p.m. ET on NBC).
1. Ross Chastain — He has seven top 10s in the first 16 races of the season. Chastain has led 348 laps, most among drivers without a victory this season. His 131 stage points ranks second overall in Cup and first among drivers without a victory this year.
2. Kevin Harvick — He has finished 11th or better in each of the last five points races. Harvick has run in the top 15 in 77.1% of the laps run this season, the highest percentage among drivers without a win.
3. Chris Buescher — His fourth-place finish at Sonoma marked his fifth top 10 in the last seven points races. He’s gone from 16th to 11th in the points during that streak. Buescher’s seven top 10s through the first 16 races are the most by a Roush driver since Carl Edwards had eight in the same span in 2014.
4. Brad Keselowski — He has six top 10s this year. Keselowski’s 83 stage points rank behind only Chastain (131) and Harvick (104) among drivers without a victory this year.
5. Bubba Wallace — He has five top 10s this season. Four of those finishes are top fives. He has started in the top 10 only three times this year but finished in the top 10 in each of those races. He also has scored 13 of his 36 stage points in those three races.
6. Alex Bowman — Started the year with six top 10s in the first seven races. Does not have a top 10 in his last six starts. Still, his average finish is 12.1, which ranks tied for second with Kyle Busch. Bowman missed three points races after an injury suffered while racing a sprint car.
7. Chase Elliott — Has missed seven of the first 16 races this season. He missed six races due to a snowboarding injury and was suspended a race for hooking Denny Hamlin in retaliation at the Coca-Cola 600. Elliott is the defending race winner at Nashville.
8. Daniel Suarez — After starting the season with three top 10s in a row, he has two top 10s in the last 13 races.
9. Ty Gibbs — He has four top 10s this season. They all came in a row. He placed ninth at Atlanta, Circuit of the Americas and Richmond and was 10th on the dirt at Bristol. Gibbs has not finished better than 13th in the eight races since.
10. Michael McDowell — Seventh-place finish at Sonoma was his third top 10 of the season and second in a row.
In the first part of this series examining which tracks offer winless drivers the best chances at making the playoffs, I covered Kevin Harvick, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suárez, Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher. Here, I tackle six more winless drivers.
I use average finishing position as the primary metric given that running near the front is a prerequisite to winning. But I also consider previous wins, top-five and top-10 finishes.
In the tables that follow, a number without a decimal point indicates a single race result rather than an average.
Currently 15th in points, Bubba Wallace has best finishes this year of fourth at Charlotte, Kansas and Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the last 10 races of the regular season don’t contain a non-superspeedway 1.5-mile track.
Road courses are Wallace’s worst track type. He has an average finish position at road courses of 25.1 from 2018 to the present. However, the 23XI Racing driver has had success at the Indy road course. Although there have only been two races at the track, Wallace’s  average is ninth and he finished fifth last year.
Wallace shines on superspeedways. He has a 16.5 average finish for all superspeedways, a win at Talladega and four top-five finishes at Daytona in 12 races there. Superspeedway averages tend to be lower than other types of tracks because of the disproportionate number of multi-car wrecks. Atlanta and Daytona are both possibilities.
Because I’m loathe to rely on any wild-card tracks, though, I also want to note that, although Wallace has an 18.5 average finish at Michigan, he finished second there last year. Given the uncertainty of the Indy road course, Michigan might be a better chance for a win. A third-place finish in New Hampshire last year makes that track a possibility.
Wallace’s main challenge at any of these tracks, however, is avoiding DNFs – he already has five this year.
Alex Bowman started the season with six top-10 finishes in the first seven races but hasn’t scored a top 10 since. Bowman was assessed a 100-point penalty for out-of-spec hood louvers, but the points were returned. A few weeks later, his team was hit with a 60-point penalty for greenhouse modifications. He also missed three points races due to a back injury.
Despite all that, Bowman is 16th in the standings. That rank tells you that his performance this summer has been much better than 16th because he is beating a lot of drivers who have run all 16 races.
From 2018 (when Bowman joined Hendrick Motorsports full-time) to now, Bowman’s best track type has been road courses. Unfortunately, his biggest successes are mostly not the road courses left on the regular-season schedule. For example, he’s yet to earn a top-10 at Watkins Glen.
Bowman has strong finishing averages at Richmond and Pocono. Two of his seven career wins are at those tracks. He finished eighth at Richmond in the spring. Between Bowman’s talent and Chevy’s domination of the series, bet on Bowman making the playoffs.
Bowman’s biggest challenge to winning his way into the playoffs might be a number of other winless drivers are also good at the same tracks.
Last year’s Daytona 500 winner, Austin Cindric, is a challenge to analyze because this is only his second full season in the Cup Series. There just isn’t much data there.
Of the 10 tracks remaining in the regular season, Cindric’s best finishes have come at the Indy road course. He finished second there last year and has an average finish of 5.5 over the two races he’s contested.
Cindric’s next best track is probably Nashville. I say probably because he’s only raced once there — but he finished seventh.
And one can’t count out a previous Daytona winner from taking that final race of the regular season.
Cindric faces the additional challenge all Ford drivers have been dealing with this year, so it’s not just a question of being the better driver, but of having the best car and setup.
I’m using McDowell’s data from 2018, when he first joined Front Row Motorsports. Given that McDowell is one of the drivers who adjusted well to the Next Gen car, I weigh his recent data more strongly than data from five years ago.
Road courses are not McDowell’s strongest suit. He has a better average finishing position at the three Bristol dirt races than he does at road courses. Given that there aren’t anymore dirt races this year, McDowell’s best hope for a win is Watkins Glen, a classic road course that demands precision. He finished sixth there last year.
I rank his chances at Pocono better than at Indianapolis. His career average is about the same, but he finished sixth at Pocono last year and eighth at the Indy road course. I rank Indy higher on the chaos index than Pocono.
And, again, we can’t rule out the 2020 Daytona 500 winner at Daytona.
A.J. Allmendinger is struggling more than I expected in his first year of full-time competition in the Cup Series with Kaulig Racing. If he does make it into the playoffs, he’s a long shot for proceeding past the first round.
Allmendinger is 20th in points after 16 races. He has not finished in the top five this season and has earned only two top-10s. His best results are two sixth-place finishes: Daytona and Sonoma.
Those two races bookend Allmendinger’s chances for making the playoffs. He’s got a 9.0 career average at Watkins Glen over 10 races, including a second-place finish last year.
Allmendinger also has performed well at the Indianapolis road course. He has a 4.0 average finish over the two races there, including a second place last year.
While Allmendinger’s superspeedway average finish position hovers around 20, his sixth-place finish at the Daytona 500 raises hopes that ‘the Dinger’ might pull off a victory in the last race of the regular season.
Chase Elliott is the biggest surprise on the list of winless drivers 16 races into the season. A snowboarding accident and a behavioral penalty cost him seven races so far this season. That put him in 27th place going into the break.
Except for Charlotte, the No. 9 driver has finished no worse than 12th since returning from the leg injury. Given his history, Elliott could probably win at any of the 10 tracks left, but let’s limit the list to four.
Elliott won Nashville last year. His career average at Nashville is so low because he was disqualified for having five lug nuts loose after the race. He had finished 13th.
Elliott also won last year’s Pocono race, but that win came about only after Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch were disqualified. Elliott he has four top-five finishes at Pocono, including the win.
He finished second at New Hampshire last year, third at Atlanta and fourth at Watkins Glen. I rank Watkins Glen his top probability for a win because his career average is 5.6.
If you don’t see your driver here, check my last post and see if I covered him previously.

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