2000 NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Simpsonverse)

The 2000 NASCAR Winston Cup Season was the 52nd season of professional stock car racing in the United States, the 29th modern-era Cup series, and the last Cup series of the 20th century. The season began on February 13 and ended on November 20. Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt was crowned champion at season’s end, breaking Richard Petty's record with his eighth and final championship before his 2002 retirement.

This was the final season for Kyle Petty and three-time Winston Cup Champion Darrell Waltrip, and the first season with Pikes Peak International Raceway and Nazareth Speedway on the schedule, as well as the first for a new NASCAR race car known as the “Strictly Stock Car”, which incorporates many new safety features. The car had been in development since February 1994, after the deaths of Neil Bonnett and Rodney Orr during practice for that year's Daytona 500.

The 2000 season also marked the final one for various networks that carried NASCAR racing. Because of the new television deal struck on December 15, 1999, it would be the last year for a multitude of these long-time broadcasters. NASCAR on CBS broadcast the final races of its lengthy forty-one season partnership, ending with the Pepsi 400 at Daytona. NASCAR on ESPN, alongside its affiliated programming with ESPN on ABC, ended its initial run of covering NASCAR's top series (both networks returned during the 2007 season); ESPN's first run of twenty seasons concluded with the NAPA 500 at Atlanta, while ABC's then-twenty-five nonconsecutive seasons with the sport stopped with the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.