NASCAR President Steve Phelps Looks at the Rivalry With F1 From a Different Lens

Up until recently, NASCAR was suffering from somewhat of a free fall in terms of viewership, marketability, and the overall popularity and relevancy of the sport. The situation was getting so dire that many predicted the end of stock car racing was just around the corner. And then Steve Phelps became the President of NASCAR.

Since Phelps’s arrival as the President, along with his team, he revitalized the sport in a number of ways. In just the past couple of seasons, the viewership and ratings have steadily gone up, the racing has become more exciting, the venues, more adventurous.

And with the Next Gen car ready to thrust NASCAR into the next generation, all seems to be going to plan, if not for one little problem – Formula 1.

Is F1 a rival to NASCAR? Steve Phelps has his say

The thing is, in the last couple of years, as NASCAR was slowly getting up on its feet, F1, backed by the marketing genius of Liberty Media, made its way into the American hearts. The ‘pinnacle of motorsports’ emerged as an outright competition of NASCAR in many ways.

However, this is not how Steve Phelps thinks. Not even a little bit.

In fact, Phelps looks at the growing popularity of F1 and even IndyCar as “an opportunity.”

For whom you ask?

For all parties, for everyone, for motorsports.

In a recent interview, NASCAR’s President addressed many issues and questions, including the modern-myth rivalry with F1.

“When motorsports is growing in the U.S., that’s a great thing for NASCAR and we celebrate that F1 had a good year and is growing. I think it will help — if you think about it, including all the series we own, we have roughly 80% of the market share of racing in this country,” Phelps said.

He added, “We can control what we can control and that’s making sure we’re doing everything we can to drive interest to our sport — we’re putting plans together and investing more than our company has ever invested before to drive the rest of the industry, and continued growth is my expectation.”

“So we think it’s a tremendous opportunity for us and hopefully F1 and IndyCar — all the other series.”

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