US viewership: Nascar beats F1 in Miami with 2.56m on FS1

• Nascar averages 2.56m in Texas, up 7% on 2024
• F1 loses nearly 1m viewers from 2024 as 2.2m watch Miami
• IndyCar sees audience jump 20% YoY to 914k

Nascar averaged 2.56 million viewers for its round at Texas Motor Speedway on FS1, eclipsing the audience of 2.2 million that watched the Formula One Miami Grand Prix on ABC.

Last season, the Miami Grand Prix set a new viewership record on ABC with an audience of 3.1 million, while Nascar managed 2.3 million at Kansas on FS1.

Rising above Formula One once more reaffirms Nascar’s position as the premier motorsport series in the US at a time when viewership is wavering under pressure from the global motorsport series.

Last weekend was an important marker for both series as it’s the first time in 2025 that they have gone up against each other in a US time zone.

In fact, Nascar saw a year-over-year (YoY) audience increase, marking just the fourth time this has happened in 11 regular season races this year.

Last season’s comparable race weekend in Dover got 2.4 million viewers, meaning there was a 6.6 per cent increase compared to 2024. Compared to the 2024 Texas race, which took place two weekends earlier, the increase was even higher at 10.8 per cent (average viewership of 2.31 million).

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Formula One will likely be disappointed by a 29 per cent YoY drop in viewership, but this is still only the third time that the series has exceeded two million viewers on ESPN. Any disappointment speaks to the growth that Formula One has enjoyed in the States.

Even after losing nearly one million viewers from last year, Formula One’s year-to-date (YTD) viewership remains up on 2024. At the same stage last season, the series was averaging 1.13 million viewers compared to 1.23 million viewers this year.

The sprint race at Miami also performed well, averaging 1.1 million viewers, up on the 946,000 viewers that watched last year’s edition.

Meanwhile, IndyCar returned for its fourth race of the season, with an average of 914,000 viewers tuning in for last weekend’s visit to Barber, marking a 20 per cent increase on 2024’s audience of 763,000, but that is down on 2023, 2022 and 2021.

The series’ YTD viewership is up 25 per cent compared to 2024, though is lower than 2023, 2022 and 2021.

Amid a packed weekend of motorsport action, Nascar’s second-tier Xfinity Series averaged just over one million viewers once more, continuing its strong run of viewership on The CW. This is now 12 consecutive races with at least one million viewers for the series.