The IndyCar race at Thermal witnessed a huge slump in viewership figures, dropping by nearly 50 percent on Sunday on FOX Sports 1. The race was scheduled at the same time as NASCAR‘s Cup Series race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The drop in viewership comes in stark contrast to the season-opener at St. Petersburg, which reportedly witnessed an impressive tally of 1.417 million viewers, a considerable 45 percent increase from 2024 on NBC.
While the events should have been scheduled to avoid conflict, offering mutual fans the opportunity to enjoy both racing series, IndyCar’s viewership drop highlights NASCAR’s popularity. This is also something for race organizers to note for future races that are on course to clash again.
What made matters worse for IndyCar was a loss of signal for FOX, which meant the broadcast was down for around 20 minutes, leading fans to miss out on the race and potentially diminishing their excitement.
Motorsport.com reported that the NASCAR Cup Series race on FS1 saw staggering viewership figures of 2.464 million, while the Xfinity Series race on Saturday on The CW topped at 1.160 million. The numbers are big compared to IndyCar, which saw a tally of 704,000. Worryingly, that signifies a 50.3 percent drop from the 2024 season opener at St. Pete. The race at Thermal last year did not conflict with a NASCAR event and reported 788,000 viewers on NBC.
Speaking of the Cup Series race that reported viewership figures upwards of 2 million, Kyle Larson took the lead of the Miami race at the end after Alex Bowman made contact with the outside wall and damaged his car.
Larson was quick to capitalize on Bowman’s error as he took no time to overtake him and became the first driver to cross the finish line. Fortunately for Bowman, the damage to his car was minimal, which made it possible to secure second place. However, Bowman didn’t hold back from blaming himself for losing the lead in the race.
“I guess I choked that one away. Just burned my stuff up. Saw the #5 [Larson] coming, so moved around a little bit,” he said. “Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit it hard with the right front and ended up just bending something enough that I lost a lot of right-front feel and then I pulled it off the wall too far right there and ended up hitting the fence pretty bad.
“So yeah, that’s on me. Just needed to do a better job there. I don’t know that we were gonna hold him off regardless, as much faster as he was than us, but certainly made it easier on him than I wanted to.
“So I hate that for this Ally 48 group. They deserve better than that. Just a couple of mistakes there. I felt like we were okay all day. That last run was the best we were.”
The NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol is scheduled on April 13, the same day as the upcoming IndyCar race at Long Beach. Although the IndyCar race starts 90 minutes after the Bristol race, the events will likely clash.
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