NASCAR is finally achieving its goal. After a $7.7 Billion media rights deal, a Netflix documentary covering its racers’ personal lives, and signing up for an international points-paying race, the stock car racing series is beating its rivals. TV ratings are the yardstick by which the series measures its success, and they had hit a downfall in recent years, especially after the Next-Gen car debuted. But now the tables have turned.

NASCAR competes mainly with its open-wheel racing rivals – IndyCar and Formula One. The battle with these two tilted in the stock car body’s favor at the beginning of 2024. As we stand now at the end of the 2024 season, the sanctioning body has covered more ground.

NASCAR topples rivals in a few areas

Since the modern era of NASCAR kicked off in 1972, television ratings have been the barometer of the sport’s overall health. CBS aired the 1979 Daytona 500 won by Richard Petty, a race that also featured a fight between the Allison brothers and Cale Yarborough. That race had a 10.5 Nielsen rating with 16 million viewers – Jimmie Johnson peaked that rating by winning the 2006 Daytona 500 when the stat was 11.3. But when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the historic race in 2023, it got a historically low rating – 4.4. That slump resonated across other Cup Series races as well. However, now NASCAR seems to be flipping the tables.

BrakeHard recently posted some eye-opening stats on X. Sharing a map of the USA, the racing blog showed “the most popular racing series for each state in 2024!” The logos of F1, Formula E, and IMSA may be bigger and more prominent, but that simply means their numbers are fewer as well. In comparison, NASCAR’s logos are smaller – but generously scattered across states. BrakeHard added a meaningful comment to indicate the series’ growth. “Big gains for NASCAR as they flipped some key states including New York and Florida.” 

At the end of 2023, F1 had around 9 states in the same graphic, whereas now there are only 5 F1 states. NASCAR was already on an upward trajectory at the beginning of 2024 and the signs were visible in March. The Circuit of The Americas race posted an average viewership of 3.31 million, a six percent increase from last year’s race. It marked the fifth straight race to record a year-over-year (YoY) percentage increase. Fast forward to October, and these signs picked up. The Kansas race averaged 2.352 million average viewers on FS1, up 0.01% compared to last year’s 2.337 million average viewers. FOX’s NASCAR TV ratings increased by 0.7 percent from the 2023 season, pulling in 53.92 million viewers across 16 races this season.

Evidently, NASCAR is giving a tough fight to its rivals. However, the path of growth is similar in one aspect.

Increasing its marketable presence

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The globalization and commercialization of the world economy have an impact everywhere. Even in motorsports, where both NASCAR and F1 strive to carve out new avenues of growth. One of them is enhancing children’s interests through toys. On the stock car racing side, traditional diecast cars are the norm – but the LEGO brand is expanding this horizon.

It has introduced special NASCAR-themed sets as a way to connect with fans, young and old. Due to the popularity of F1 in the USA, now all 10 F1 teams have their own LEGO sets. Ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, LEGO Group held a major activation event, in which it debuted the 2025 Formula 1 sets.

Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Marketing Officer of the LEGO Group, emphasized the vision behind this project. “Together, we’re creating products that ignite curiosity and foster a love of engineering and speed in builders of all ages.” This shared opportunity for F1 and NASCAR is also offering growth of their fanbases. “Our goal is to bring families together to build, explore, and share their passion for the sport, offering something truly special for everyone,” Goldin continued. Hendrick Motorsports also partnered with Carrera to provide an exclusive offering of slot cars. These are the popular at-home racecars that enable competition within a household.

LEGO sets are bringing both F1 and NASCAR together. However, TV ratings are not – and 2025 is sure to intensify this competition.