Fox Sports not only says goodbye for the 2006 Nextel Cup season after Saturday night’s Pepsi 400, it also bids farewell to summertime visits to Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla.

But from 2007 through at least 2014, the term of the eight-year contract that constitutes NASCAR’s second network television deal, the network’s crews will take up residence in central Florida for the Daytona 500, stock-car racing’s showcase event.

A great deal has happened in the six years since Fox did its first NASCAR race in the 2001 Daytona 500, including an Emmy award for the best live sports series in 2005. But even as his team wraps up its work for this season, Fox Sports president Ed Goren is asking them to look ahead.

“We won an Emmy a couple of months ago and that was wonderful,” Goren said last week after a meeting of the Fox team in Sonoma, Calif. “What’s important now is what are we going to do next? I am challenging everyone on our team to get better.”

Last year, Fox averaged a 6.0 rating for races shown on the network. That was the highest rating for a NASCAR package ever, and the last major sport to average a record rating in a season was the NFL in 1981. Over the term of the contract that began in 2001, Fox has averaged a 5.6 rating, up 12 percent from the 5.0 average for races aired on networks in 2000.

“NASCAR has exceeded our expectations,” Goren said “When you fight as hard as we did to work out a new deal and … come away knowing that for eight years we will have the Daytona 500 every year, I think that speaks to our enthusiasm for the sport.”

NASCAR on FOX: Handheld camera in the pits. ©2006FOX SPORTS CR:FOX SPORTS

Fox will have fewer races in the new contract – 13 compared with 16 in the current deal. Fox will also have the Budweiser Shootout plus two Truck Series races.

TNT will air six races after Fox’s final Cup event next year, which would be Dover under the current schedule. ESPN and ABC take over for the remainder of the season, with ESPN getting six Cup events and ABC showing the Indianapolis race and then the 10 Chase for the Nextel Cup events. ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC will carry the entire Busch Series schedule. Speed will have the 150-mile qualifying races at Daytona, the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge and the balance of the Truck Series schedule.

The deal’s total value is around $4.5 billion, with Fox paying $1.64 billion, ESPN/ABC about $2.16 billion and TNT around $650 million.

Goren said Fox hopes to continue to build the Daytona 500 into one of the nation’s top-level sports events by promoting it heavily in the weeks leading up to each February’s Speedweeks.

“The Daytona 500 was always a great event,” he said. “But over the past five years has established itself as one of the sport’s calendar must-see events.

“We will use the Fiesta, Orange and Sugar bowls, the BCS championship game and the NFC postseason, so there will be more eyeballs watching Fox Sports building up to the Daytona 500 every year than ever before.”

Goren vividly remembers the beginnings of NASCAR on his network.

“When we signed football, hockey and baseball, I could have told you as soon as we signed the deals what direction we would be going in and who the people were that we would hire,” Goren said. “With NASCAR I didn’t have that comfort level and that scared the heck out of me. (But) I was so proud of how the group came together.

“That first Daytona 500, even before the final lap when Dale Earnhardt died, was probably as emotional of a day in broadcasting as I have ever had. … The emotion we had going into and going through that day, and then it went beyond anything we could have imagined.”

If Goren plans major changes in Fox’s approach to NASCAR he’s not about to tip his hand. “We’ve already given everybody a road map to copy,” he joked.

But he’s proud of the stability Fox has had with its talent, including Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds in the booth and Chris Myers and Jeff Hammond leading the prerace show.

“Either we’re stubborn, or we hired really outstanding people to work our shows,” Goren said. “I’d like to believe, and I truly do believe we’ve made some outstanding talent choices.”