From Sunday To Saturday
Thanks in large part to the ratings boost NBC received from the 2002 race being run in primetime hours, NASCAR made a decision to move the race date from Sunday afternoon to Saturday night beginning in 2003. NBC retained their rights to broadcast the race, unlike in most of the night events aired in their part of the season's contract which normally aired on TNT. With the move, then-Lowe's Motor Speedway became one of only two tracks in NASCAR to have two night dates on the schedule.
In 2005, the start was delayed by the finish to the Notre Dame-Southern California college football game which ran late. While the game was in its final minutes, NBC, the broadcaster of both events, had the race engines start and the pace laps proceed. As the pace car pulled off the track to pit road to start the race, NBC had just switched coverage from the game to the race, and the broadcast began as the field took the green flag.
Since 2010, it has been the only race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup televised by ABC, with the rest being on ESPN.
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Famous quotes containing the words sunday and/or saturday:
“Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)