Assimilation in NASCAR...

Alright so while I was at the gym today I got stuck on a stationary bike in front of the television that ESPN2 on, which happened to have NASCAR NOW - one of my favorite shows (I HAAAATTEEE NASCAR)... Now let me preface this by saying that by no means am I racist or bigoted or anything like that, I'm just fully aware of racial implications in our wonderful country. So the host of NASCAR NOW was African-American and then the out-in-the-field correspondant was fucking Brad Daugherty, former Cleveland Cavaliers basketball player and also former ESPN basketball analyst. Now I don't know if Brad's a big NASCAR fan or if he's just in the dog house with ESPN and got relegated to working the NASCAR show, but I was thinking to myself, what does the core audience of this show (white, bigoted Southerners) react to this? Is this ESPN's attempt to try to get more African-Americans to watch NASCAR? I'm just trying to analyze this as if we were in one of my communication theory classes back in college. Any opinions?