TV News: Weekend USA Motorsports TV Ratings

TV Ratings for motorsports events broadcast in the USA over the Memorial Day weekend. NASCAR was in Charlotte, F1 was in Monaco and IndyCar was racing in the Indy 500.

TV Rating Analysis

NASCAR

In its final airing on FOX, NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 ratings took a hit from the rain — and the resulting Indy 500 competition.

Overlapping with the rain-delayed Indianapolis 500 on NBC, Sunday’s rain-shortened NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 from Charlotte averaged a 1.7 rating and 3.10 million viewers on FOX — marking the lowest rated and least-watched edition of the race in its 23-year run on FOX. The race moves to Amazon Prime Video next year.

Christopher Bell’s win declined 10.5% in ratings and 8.7% in viewership from last year’s Monday edition (1.9, 3.40M) and -24% and -20% respectively from the last time the race was run on a Sunday in 2022 (2.2, 3.87M). The 2022 race was completed as planned.

NASCAR Xfinity Series racing from Charlotte drew a 0.7 and 1.16 million on FOX, the largest audience for the race since 2016 (1.41M), with the caveat that it had not aired on “big FOX” since 2015 (1.9M).

IndyCar gets boost from Kyle Larson

The Indy 500 comfortably won the head-to-head, averaging a 2.5 rating and 5.02 million viewers (5.31 million including streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics) — up 6.67% in viewers but down 5.7% from last year marking the lowest rated edition of the race (excluding the COVID-delayed 2020 edition) but also the most-watched in three years.

Episode 5 of Season 2 of IndyCar’s version of F1’s Drive to Survive called 100 Days to Indy aired on CW on May 24th, and the viewership numbers were horrible (194,000 viewers on CW), down 11.8% from last year

Meant to ride on the coattails of F1’s successful Netflix Series Drive to Survive, 100 Days to Indy just never seemed to have the same impact as Drive to Survive in terms of generating new fans, which sees between 5 and 6 million viewers per episode.

Formula 1

Sunday morning’s live telecast of the Formula 1 Monaco GP attracted the largest U.S. live television audience on record for the iconic event, as an average of 1.965 million viewers watched the race telecast on ABC. The audience peaked at 2.3 million between 11:15-11:30 a.m. ET.

Viewership for the race, which peaked at 2.3 million from 11:15-11:30 PM ET, increased 9.8% from last year (1.79M).

The audience is the third-largest for a live F1 telecast on U.S. television on record, behind only the 2024 and 2022 editions of the Miami Grand Prix.

Despite a 45-minute delay due to a major crash on the first lap, the audience between 9-11:30 a.m. was up seven percent over the 1.833 million average for the 2023 race, which was the first time the Monaco Grand Prix had aired live on ABC.

When the race resumed at 9:45 a.m. after the opening lap crash, an average of 2.07 million viewers watched until the conclusion.

Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix qualifying drew a 0.38 and 727,000 on ESPN2, down 17% from the prior year on ESPN..

TV Rating Data