David Hinckley has a piece in the New York Daily News today on NASCAR's partnership moving from XM to Sirius, and how both services are appealing to the NASCAR fan.

The five-year, $107.5 million deal that Sirius inked with NASCAR allows them to broadcast all 36 races starting this year. Sirius carries 12 hours of live NASCAR talk every day, including the David Poole and Marty Snider morning show and NASCAR driver Tony Stewart's show every Tuesday night. Sirius also provides separate channels of in-car audio between the driver and pit crew during the races.

"Our package is radically different from what XM offered," says Sirius' Scott Greenstein. "We treat NASCAR like we treat the NFL. We talk about the race all week, we carry the race and then we have a five-hour post-race show."

Meanwhile XM still provides NASCAR-related talk and coverage, but not the live races.

"We're still in the game," says XM's Eric Logan. "We just do it differently. We looked at how people were using the channel, and most of it was to talk about the races, not listen to them. So we saved $20 million a year and kept what most subscribers wanted."

With 75 million NASCAR fans, it's all part of Sirius' strategy to target young men.

"We have Howard Stern, NFL football, the Playboy Channel and other programming that already appealed to those listeners," Greenstein says. "So NASCAR fits right in, even though it stands on its own."

[New York Daily News]