NASCAR Releases Videos of almost all races since 1951
Tuesday, NASCAR unveiled a new website, NASCAR Classics, featuring HD video of some of the greatest races in the sport’s history, giving fans the chance to re-watch some of the sport’s greatest races.
The videos, dating all the way back to the first Daytona Beach race on the beach in 1951 and running all the way through the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway just a few weeks ago.
When you first enter the site it shows you the top-75 races in NASCAR’s history on the home page, but in fact there is so much more – just click by year or track.
The incredible races that are now online include the 1979 Daytona 500, the first race that was broadcast on TV from start to finish and featured the infamous fight on the backstretch grass between Cale Yarborough and the Allison brothers Bobby and Donnie.
There’s also the 1967 Daytona 500 dominated by Mario Andretti, an outsider from USAC who took the NASCAR regulars to school for the first time.
You can also find the Winston All-Star Race from 1987 with Dale Earnhardt’s legendary “Pass in the Grass,” the 1992 Hooters 500 from Atlanta Motor Speedway that marked both the final race for the King, Richard Petty, and the first race for rookie Jeff Gordon, and of course there’s Dale Earnhardt’s iconic 1998 win in the Daytona 500.
The website also features races like the 2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 from Darlington Raceway, which ended with the closest finish in NASCAR history, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s emotional 2001 victory in the Coca Cola 400, the sport’s first race back at Daytona International Speedway after the death of Dale Earnhardt.
Press Release
NASCAR is introducing a new way for fans to explore its rich racing history well into the future. NASCAR Classics is now live on nascar.com (www.nascar.com/classics), offering free, ad-free viewing of more than 1,000 full race replays, condensed broadcasts and recap packages spanning eight decades of speed in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Anchoring the extensive archive is a new anniversary capsule: NASCAR’s Top 75 Greatest Races. The unranked collection, selected by the sanctioning body, showcases some of the most exciting on-track action, important milestones and enduring memories throughout NASCAR’s first 75 years, bookended by 1951’s Motor City 250 in Michigan and Ross Chastain’s “Hail Melon” move at Martinsville in October of 2022. (A more detailed rundown of NASCAR’s Top 75 Greatest Races is available here on nascar.com.)
NASCAR also launched dedicated NASCAR Classics accounts on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, extending the brand beyond the digital video destination to engage fans with a variety of throwback content on an ongoing basis.
“NASCAR Classics is a significant addition to our digital content offerings that for the first time ever gives fans around the world free, uninterrupted access to enjoy decades of past NASCAR Cup Series action whenever and wherever they’d like,” said Tim Clark, senior vice president and chief digital officer at NASCAR.
Visitors to NASCAR Classics can easily choose their own journey through history via navigation dropdowns that filter races by era and by track, or through a keyword search that lets them look for specific drivers and race names in addition to individual years and venues. Once a video is selected, a custom timeline tool enables viewers to jump directly to key moments throughout the race.
The increased interactivity comes courtesy of software company Twizted Design, with whom NASCAR partnered to build Classics on Twizted’s next-gen video streaming and management platform for OTT channels, called Videoflow.
NASCAR Classics includes most Cup Series race broadcasts available to date, and NASCAR will continue to add recently run Cup Series races to the online archive within weeks of their conclusion.