As NASCAR has evolved, so have the race start times, much to the dismay of fans and drivers. Remember when a Cup Series race would kick off at 12 p.m. or 1 p.m., wrapping up by mid-afternoon?

Those were the days when fans enjoyed NASCAR races and evenings together. But now, races start at 3 p.m., a time that isn’t exactly winning any popularity contests. Even Kyle Larson recently chimed in, saying, “I miss the early race starts.”

Deciding the race times is neither in the hands of the fans nor Larson or even NASCAR themselves. Any change in race time is followed by an outburst of fans, cursing NASCAR. However, Dale Earnhardt Jr. came to NASCAR’s rescue, who couldn’t emphasize enough that it is not in NASCAR’s control!

The matter has come to light after the recent Michigan race was run for 51 laps. The race was then postponed until the next day at 11 a.m. ET, making fans nostalgic about the early race starts. And they called out NASCAR for changing the timings. However, one thing to note here is that racing has evolved to encompass a broader commercial landscape, with pre-race events and in-race advertising serving as significant revenue streams for NASCAR. And most importantly, NASCAR doesn’t control the race timings anymore.

NASCAR’s primary revenue source is broadcasting rights, with a recent $7.7 billion deal signed with FOX Sports, NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Amazon. This represents a substantial increase of 40% compared to the previous media rights agreement.

This increased investment from broadcasters has led to concerns about their growing influence over the sport. Although that is the sad reality, NASCAR has no control over it. That is why Dale Earnhardt Jr. has appealed to fans to stop cursing NASCAR. In the August 20 episode of Dale Jr. download, he said, “The start times are not chosen by NASCAR. Quit with this NASCAR Bunch of assh**les, quit with that. I give NASCAR a hard time when I feel like they deserve it, but they don’t deserve the credit for this. The start times are predicted by and chosen by networks and they influence that mostly.”

For such a massive amount, NASCAR has traded control over race timings. And it is kind of obvious that networks will do everything in their power to maximize viewership. Race timings are carefully chosen by broadcasters to maximize their advertising revenue. Hence, networks often extend pre-race programming, resulting in delayed race start times.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. explains why networks choose the timing that they do

According to Dale Jr., the networks have to make back the 7.7 billion dollars and more. Reiterating this, he said, “The TV deals are as large as they are the networks are going to want to try to maximize their advertising dollars and get all of that money back and then some more. And so they need to put these races where they feel like they’ll get the best numbers.”

With TV, it is just a numbers game. There are limited advertising slots on a broadcast, and those slots are pre-decided based on past data of viewership. To put it simply, if the viewer is most active at 3:00 p.m., the race will take place then. If the viewer is most active at 5:00  then it will happen then. Broadcasters have to try to aim for the maximum number of viewers to see the commercials that they play in between races.

On TV, there is another issue that broadcasters have to consider when choosing race timings. The race should not coincide with some other big event on TV. Otherwise, all the viewership will go there.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. further explains it in detail, “They would avoid competing against any show that’s going to have a large audience so they don’t want to go up against the NFL at 1:00.” 

Like it or not, NASCAR has to adhere to this. Probably with networks pumping more and more money, more control will be gone from NASCAR. Hopefully, they try to maintain the balance and essence of racing.