2025 Daytona 500: FOX Sports Looks To Ride Super Bowl LIX Momentum Into NASCAR Season

FOX leverages NASCAR experience for newly added IndyCar Series next month

Although, technically, FOX Sports kicked off its 2025 NASCAR campaign with the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium two weeks ago, the rubber truly hits the road this week in Daytona. The broadcaster heads into its 25th consecutive season of NASCAR coverage and its 22nd Daytona 500 broadcast (tied for the most by any broadcaster) with a new media-rights deal and plenty of production-technology firepower.

Four-time Indy 500 champion Hélio Castroneves will make his first appearance in the Daytona 500 this weekend.

“The Daytona 500 is a big race in every respect,” says FOX Sports, EVP, Technical and Field Operations, Mike Davies. “Not only is it an iconic race with so much history, but it’s also very long track at 2½ miles, it has one of the largest [entry lists], it has the most races throughout the week of any [NASCAR event], and it has a massive pregame show and concert. When we say ‘big,’ we’re not talking only about the spectacle of the whole thing; we’re talking about the size of the event itself. In terms of production enhancements, we [deploy] as many resources as possible to cover every angle of this race.”

FOX Sports’ weekends will look very different under the terms of the new NASCAR rights deals. The CW network is set to become exclusive home of the NASCAR Xfinity Series, freeing Saturdays for FOX to launch its newly acquired IndyCar Series package.

“This is a very special year for FOX,” says Davies, “not only because we get to re-up our contract with NASCAR and do some of the more iconic races at the beginning of the season but also because we know that this runs right into our new contract with IndyCar. We are looking forward to seeing how these two racing series one right after the other can serve racing fans’ appetite.”

Drones Lead the Way

FOX’s 1080p HDR production of the race — and its sprawling two-hour pregame show (beginning at 11:30 a.m. ET) — will feature an arsenal of more than 50 cameras (plus in-car systems) and will rely more than ever on drones provided by Beverly Hills Aerials (with transmission handled by BSI). The broadcaster will deploy three types of drones: an FPV drone, a high-speed drone, and a heavy-duty cinema drone.

FOX will use three types of drones at Daytona: an FPV drone, a high-speed drone, and a heavy-duty cinema drone.

Among other key tools are BSI in-car GyroCam units and Sony Hawk-Eye extraction capabilities from a Sony HDC-5500 4K camera. FOX’s assortment of cameras distributed throughout the track includes a large complement of Sony HDC-4300, -4800, and -5500 broadcast cameras; a bevy of Fletcher robotics (mostly outfitted with Sony HDC-P31 camera heads); and several specialty units.

FOX also continues to escalate its use of virtual graphics and AR within the broadcast, including optical car pointers. It is taking optical tracking data provided by NASCAR (via BOLT6) and giving that data to SMT to create enhanced optical tracking pointers for aerial coverage.

In the compound, FOX Sports’ operation will be based in Game Creek Video Cleatus mobile units, which will serve as the broadcaster’s NASCAR home all season.

FOX and Beverly Hills Aerials continue to ramp up use of drones for NASCAR coverage.

Cosm Comes Aboard

FOX is also working with Cosm to produce and deliver this year’s Daytona 500 to the tech company’s immersive Shared Reality venues in Los Angeles and Dallas for the first time. Leveraging multiple vantage points throughout the Daytona International Speedway, Cosm’s cameras will deliver real-time footage, and its spatial high-fidelity audio will deliver the roar of the race to its 12K+ LED domes, allowing guests to feel like they are right in the middle of NASCAR’s biggest race.

Cosm has carried many different sports, but this weekend’s Daytona 500 will mark a new chapter with motorsports.

“It has been exciting to work with them on several events, including the Super Bowl,” says Davies. “The question is, how we can present a race over the course of 2½ miles inside a dome? You can’t do it the same way that you would do a basketball, soccer, or football game.

“It’s going to be learning process,” he continues. “Our production folks are working with Cosm to help guide them in terms of how to make motorsports successful in the dome. They understand that they are going to have to treat it a little differently, whether that means multiple windows [on the LED screen] or perhaps switching cameras less frequently. We’re all working together to figure out some best practices.”

The team is also looking to use Cosm’s proprietary camera rigs to offer fans a panoramic view of the race within the FOX broadcast as well. “We are working closely with Cosm to see if we can use any of their cameras for our coverage at Daytona,” says Davies. “I think we will make it happen. Those amazing cameras and lenses [provide some] panoramic views that can be useful in the traditional broadcast — not unlike what we did with them for the Super Bowl.”

If the Audio Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

When you have a good thing going, you don’t mess with it. That’s essentially how Senior Audio Engineer Kevin McCloskey approaches the audio for the race. That’s not surprising, given that the production has garnered the broadcaster and its audio crew several Emmy Awards for Outstanding Live Event Audio, most recently in 2023.

“When you have a good product like the one we have here for the race’s sound,” he says, “you want to keep it going.”

Behind the scenes in Daytona at a FOX Sports feature shoot

Thus, the microphones and their placements (50-plus of those) will be where they’ve been nearly since the 2016 launch of NASCAR’s flagship venue: the organization’s first true “stadium,” the $400 million Daytona Rising project. One change last year was an update to the team communications wireless infrastructure. This year, Florida rapper Pitbull will return to perform during the prerace show, some of which will be broadcast as part of FOX’s coverage. He was scheduled to do so last year, but the concert was rained out.

McCloskey describes his team as “a great cast of characters.” He will be joined onsite and elsewhere by audio engineers Zachary Bayer, Jeff Bratta, Linal Getchell, Barbara Hanford, Craig Lenox, Anthony Lomastro, Daniel Masters, Jamie McCombs, Stephen Onuska, Andy Rostron, Harry Weaver, and Douglas Wilson. Mike Gilman will supervise comms onsite in Daytona. Jeff Feltz is in Indianapolis managing the live radio’s team communications.

FOX is also working to transcribe racing-radio audio in hopes of making it more digestible for the viewer at home. “NASCAR is a unique sport,” McCloskey explains. “It’s the only professional sport — aside from our work with the UFL — where you can hear the athletes in communication in real time during competition. We’ve made some improvements to the quality of the radios so they sound a lot clearer, but we’re also working on methods to do quick turnarounds for transcription of edited packages so that you can read what the drivers are saying as you watch the package.”

It Doesn’t Get Much Busier Than This 

It has been an ultra-busy couple of weeks for the FOX Sports operations team: just off its biggest production of the year in Super Bowl LIX, it had college basketball and the Westminster Dog Show.

FOX Sports will have a large arsenal of cameras in Daytona to cover the action.

The team is overseen by Field Technical Producer George Grill and Director, Remote Engineering, Matt Battaglia, with Tech Managers Mark Alsmeyer, Clyde Taylor, and Chance Kulis. The operations team is led by Karin Fasing, Savannah Brotherton, Kellie Wagner, and Hannah Seaman. Matt Connor Campfield, Jacob Cline, and Michael Marble are in the crewing department. Wayne Nelson is the leader in the NASCAR shared broadcast compound.

“We’re actually pretty lean when you look at the other networks,” says Davies, “so there’s a lot of multitasking when we have a run of events like this. We are fortunate in that we have a lot of very capable people. Folks who have been with us for a long time have learned to delegate, and some of the newer people have really stepped up. I’m proud of how the team has come together and operated with max efficiency in a difficult situation over the past couple weeks. At FOX, it’s not just about what you do but how you do it, and I couldn’t be happier with how everyone pulled it off.”

SVG Audio Editor Dan Daley contributed to this article.