TV News: USA weekend motorsports TV Viewers/TV Ratings
Major motorsports TV viewer numbers for this past weekend in the USA. Formula 1 held the Hungarian GP, NASCAR was in Iowa, and IMSA was at Road America
Formula 1
An average of 1.2 million TV viewers tuned into the Hungarian GP on ESPN Sunday morning, up 15% from last year’s 1.1 million Hungarian GP on ESPN.
The race peaked at 1.4 million viewers between 9:30am and 9:45am ET
The race drew 533,000 viewers in the all important 18-49 age bracket, or 44%. Compare that to NASCAR and IMSA under 20%, and you begin to understand why companies choose to pay big money to be in F1.
F1 averages over 80 million TV viewers per race worldwide, dwarfing all other sports.
NASCAR
USA Network’s coverage of the NASCAR Iowa Corn 350 drew 2.2 million viewers, down 18.5% from 2.7 million viewers in 2024.
On the other hand, the Xfinity Series race on Saturday drew 1.008 overall viewers on the CW Network. Every Xfinity Series race that ran on time this year has drawn over a million viewers on the over-the-air channel.
- Most-watched Xfinity Series race from Iowa since June 2018
- Viewership up +23% compared to last year’s 22nd race from Daytona (8/23/24 on USA)
- Audience up +16% compared to last Xfinity Series Iowa race (6/15/24 on USA)
- Race peaked at 1,181,000 total viewers from 7:15-7:30pm ET
IMSA
No 2025 TV viewership numbers yet. Do not expect them to be high as IMSA WeatherTech races typically get very few viewers.
The 2024 IMSA Road America TV rating was 0.18, with 266,000 viewers on USA.
The 2023 IMSA race at Road America aired on USA Network and averaged 385,000 viewers with a 0.23 rating. This was a significant decrease in viewership from the previous year’s 1.087 million viewers when the race aired on the NBC broadcast network.