ESPN’s flagship program SportsCenter will present a 90-minute special from Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday, Nov. 22, at 1:00pm/et, following NFL Countdown on ESPN. The telecast will lead up to NASCAR Countdown on ABC at 2:30pm/et. SportsCenter presented by AutoZone at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship will be hosted by Allen Bestwick and will give NASCAR fans the opportunity to see things that go on prior to a race that they normally don’t get to see. Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel, will be a special on-site reporter for ESPN and look at some of the dirty jobs of NASCAR. Rowe’s voice has been heard by NASCAR fans as the narrator of segments during ESPN’s coverage of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup this season.
ESPN’s Dave Burns will spend the program shadowing the #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet of Jimmie Johnson, taking viewers behind-the-scenes as the car goes through final race preparation and NASCAR inspection. And ESPN’s Marty Smith will shadow Johnson himself in the hours before he attempts to make history as the first driver to win four consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championships.
The program also will include a heartwarming story of how the building of Homestead-Miami Speedway in 1994 and 1995 helped bring the Homestead area back from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew, one of the worst natural disasters in history, on Aug. 24, 1992. Joining Bestwick in the ESPN Pit Studio will be analysts Rusty Wallace, Brad Daugherty and Ray Evernham. Several NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers also are expected to stop by the studio during the course of the program.
