ESPN NASCAR Team To Have Different Look at Nashville

Reid, Welch Shift Gears from IndyCar Series on ESPN

ESPN’s NASCAR coverage team will feature a few new faces this weekend as the NASCAR Busch Series returns to action at Nashville Superspeedway. Coverage of Saturday’s race, as well as practice and qualifying, will air on ESPN2.

ESPN veterans Marty Reid and Vince Welch are on loan from ESPN’s IndyCar Series coverage as part of a schedule weekend off for NASCAR regulars Jerry Punch and Dave Burns. Reid will handle the play-by-play call of Saturday’s 300-mile NASCAR Busch Series event at Nashville, as well as in the practice and qualifying programs, while Welch will work as a pit reporter on the Nashville telecasts.

Rich Feinberg, ESPN senior coordinating producer, said that the length of the NASCAR season and the fact that ESPN will be televising 52 races plus qualifying and practice shows this year led to the development of a schedule that will provide time off during the season for the announcers. The system took effect in the most recent ESPN telecasts from Bristol, Tenn., when pit reporter Allen Bestwick had the weekend off. Shannon Spake, a reporter for ESPN’s SportsCenter and NASCAR Now programs, substituted for him.

“We really focus on work and life balance at ESPN, and that priority extends to the people who work on our NASCAR telecasts,” said Feinberg. “We’re happy to have the luxury of bringing in very talented people like Shannon Spake from our studio shows and Marty Reid and Vince Welch from our IndyCar Series coverage to help us as we schedule some weekends off for our team.”

ESPN2 is televising the NASCAR Busch Series all season, with six of the 29 races on ESPN on ABC, the first time in NASCAR history that the same company has televised the entire season for the series. In addition, ESPN will televise the final 17 races of the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series season, including all 10 races in the “Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup” on ABC, creating many double race telecast weekends.

Reid, who joined ESPN in 1982, has been part of the network’s coverage of many forms of motorsports, including NASCAR, IndyCar, Champ Car, NHRA and others. He has been lead announcer on the IndyCar Series team since 2006. Welch has worked on both radio and television coverage of the IndyCar Series since 1996 and has also been part of the coverage of the annual NASCAR event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

At Nashville, Reid will be reunited with booth analyst Rusty Wallace, the two having worked together the entire IndyCar Series season in 2006, Wallace’s first year since retiring from his stellar driving career. Two-time NASCAR champion crew chief Andy Petree will also work as analyst with Reid and Wallace. Joining Welch as pit reporters will be Bestwick, Jamie Little and Mike Massaro.

ESPN’s race coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET on Saturday with the pre-race NASCAR Countdown program, with host Erik Kuselias joined by analysts Stacy Compton and Brad Daugherty. The race telecast starts at 3 p.m.

Live coverage of Friday’s one-hour final practice session for the series will be aired from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Qualifying will be televised from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday.

About NASCAR on ESPN:

ESPN and ESPN on ABC will have comprehensive, multi-platform coverage featuring telecasts of the final 17 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup races including the 10-race “Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup” championship on ESPN on ABC. Additionally, ESPN2 will be the home of the NASCAR Busch Series all season. For the first time in the history of televised motorsports, all programming will be produced totally in High Definition. ESPN’s comprehensive, multimedia NASCAR coverage will extend to ESPN.com, ESPN Deportes, ESPN Deportes Radio, SportsCenter, ESPN The Magazine, ESPN Classic, ESPNEWS, ESPNRadio, ESPN360.com and ESPN International, among other ESPN platforms. ESPN aired 262 NASCAR Cup Races over a 20-year period starting in 1981. The network's award-winning, live flag-to-flag coverage on ESPN was honored with 17 Sports Emmy Awards, as well as many industry honors. It is widely credited for helping to popularize the sport nationwide. NASCAR races have appeared on ABC for decades, beginning with broadcasts on the award-winning Wide World of Sports program in the 1960s.

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