NASCAR’s Cup Series was back on FS1 last weekend at Martinsville, and Sunday afternoon’s telecast averaged a 1.26 Nielsen rating and 2.218 million viewers, per numbers from ShowBuzzDaily.com. That’s down fractionally from the 1.30/2.303m for Richmond earlier this month, which was the first 2023 Cup race on the cable network, but a solid year-on-year gain for Martinsville, which averaged 1.10/1.885m in 2022 when it was FS1’s first race of the season.
NBC’s telecast of the NTT IndyCar Series race from Long Beach on Sunday afternoon averaged 0.61 and 1.026m viewers, fairly level with the 0.64/1.055m from last year and up from the 0.53/830,000 last time out at Texas. NBC Sports reports that its Total Audience Delivery for the race, counting streaming, was 1.076m, making it the second most-watched IndyCar race on NBC on record and second most-streamed IndyCar race — just behind last year’s Long Beach event (1.078m) — outside of the Indy 500 or last year’s Peacock-exclusive Toronto telecast.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series race from Martinsville averaged 0.52/894,000 for Martinsville Saturday night on FS1, up slightly from last year’s 0.51/854,000, although that race ran on a Friday night. The Craftsman Truck Series race from Martinsville Friday night o FS1 averaged 0.21/347,000, down from 0.29/455,000 last year when it ran on a Thursday.
For the second year running, Monster Energy Supercross ran on NBC Saturday afternoon from Atlanta, and averaged a 0.30 and 502,000 viewers. That is down from a 0.37/609,000 for the same event on NBC in 2022.
Delayed coverage of the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series finals from Las Vegas on FS1 averaged 0.17/254,000 Sunday night.
In the 18-49 aged demographic, the NASCAR Cup race had 392,000 to IndyCar’s 193K, Xfinity with 164K, and Supercross with 140K.
Numbers for the IMSA WeatherTech Championship at Long Beach and FIA WEC from Portimao were not available.