The 68th NASCAR Daytona 500 is right around the corner. With less than two weeks until the crown jewel event kicks off at the iconic Daytona International Speedway, FOX’s NASCAR booth has announced major changes, including reduced roles for many.
As reported by Joseph Srigley on X, Jamie Little and Eric Brennan will share play-by-play duties in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2026. Little led the Truck Series play-by-play last year alongside Adam Alexander, until the latter left the network ahead of the 2026 season.
Little will also call the Daytona 500 alongside former NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick and three-time Cup Series champion Joey Logano. Meanwhile, Josh Sims, Regan Smith, and Amanda Busic will serve as pit reporters for the event.
Mike Joy and Clint Bowyer will also join Harvick and Logano in the FOX booth for the Daytona 500. Legendary crew chief Larry McReynolds will provide race analysis. Chris Myers, Jamie McMurray, Michael Waltrip, and Tom Rinaldi will provide pre-race analysis for the 500-mile feature.
On the ARCA side, Brennan will split play-by-play duties with Brent Strover. Brennan will also call the Daytona 500 with Phil Parsons. Kaitlyn Vincie and Alex Weaver will be on pit road for the season-opener.
For now, all eyes are on this year’s Daytona 500. Scheduled for February 15, the event will be televised live on FOX, starting at 2:30 pm ET onwards. Fans can also listen to live radio updates on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
NASCAR returns to 10-race ‘Chase’ championship format for 2026
NASCAR has a new championship format in place for the 2026 season. It’s not new per se, as the sport followed the ‘Chase’ from 2004 until 2014. In short, the ‘Chase’ playoff format awards full-season consistency and introduces a points model that awards drivers with higher race wins.
Which means that the elimination-style playoffs are gone and winning races will no longer guarantee spots in the postseason. At the Cup level, the top-16 drivers with the most points will make the playoffs, and the driver with the most points after these 10 races will win the championship.
Reflecting on the same, NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell said in a statement,
“The biggest thing was looking at who we wanted to be as a sport going forward, and that included really a focus on our core fan base and who had been with us for a long, long time and gotten the sport to where it was. So we wanted our future format to reflect that.”
“A lot of things you’re going to see and how we talked to the fans, from an overall NASCAR standpoint, was going to really embrace that hardcore fan, and so we felt like the format needed to absolutely reflect that,” he added.
The format will remain the same for the other two touring national series. The only difference is that the field size will be set at 12 for the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and 10 for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
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