Standing on the pedestal of motorsports in the United States is a big deal.
Whether the common racing fan watches every day, pays attention and digests, or takes in the content casually; they’ve heard of NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula 1.
What’s going on now is somewhat of a battle for popularity – or rather a shared wealth and growth of the sport going on across the industry.
The rise helps everybody, but it makes it much harder, especially for IndyCar to stand out at the same time.
IndyCar doesn’t want to be left behind. They want to be a part, and a much bigger part at that, of the slowly rising motorsports viewing numbers.
“I worry all the time,” Graham Rahal, a very candid driver that has spoke ad nauseum on this issue lately, said on the latest episode of the Speed Street podcast with competitor Conor Daly and IndyCar personality Joey Mulinaro. “I call up Jay Frye. I’m on him, and Bud (Denker) and Jonathan Gibson. Like guys, what is going on? F1 announces Vegas. NASCAR announces Chicago – now they’re not going to Road America, which is fine, come hang out with us. We put on a better show there anyways. I’m alright with all of that, but as I said to him, what are we doing to push the needle forward?”
At the very least, the weekend Hy-Vee put on at Iowa Speedway pushed the needle for those in attendance, bringing in one of the track’s highest attended events in the past decade.
The concourse was packed with activity, track security and companies with stands there were handing out water for free. Hy-Vee even put mini-stores all around the track. Anything a fan needed was all right there for them.
The company also brought in a slew of musical acts from Tim McGraw to Florida Georgia Line and saw Gwen Stefani pre-race Sunday. Blake Shelton performed for a number of people for nearly 90 minutes after the racing was all said and done.
Tons of people stuck around to see Blake Shelton afterwards. Think he's been performing for more than an hour already. pic.twitter.com/oHd2zKVpZV
— Connor Ferguson (@cfchangs9) July 24, 2022
For once, it felt like IndyCar was the star of the show – and it felt like that all weekend. It’s a step that, in today’s age, IndyCar has to realize and utilize.
This has to be the standard for a festival-style, big-event weekend.
“I think when you look at the playbook for what promoters should be expected to do from here on out, the game should be elevated,” Rahal said after laying down his pair of qualifying laps at Iowa. “At the end of the day, I look at Formula 1 as the model. They put on these great events – these very extravagant events. Their races are often subpar in many ways.
“The events are spectacular and that’s why people are drawn to them,” Rahal continued. “We have to up our game. We go to some great cities – St. Pete, Indianapolis, Toronto, Long Beach and the list goes on. We have to make those like Newton, Iowa, which I never thought I’d say but it’s the truth.”
The ratings came in for the action on TV Tuesday. While it doesn’t make a difference as to what the event was, it makes a big one for the companies selecting to televise the action.
Saturday’s race drew a 0.61 rating, which was higher than the Formula 1 race, but had less unique viewers. That at least tells you that the racing was compelling, but anyone who watched the racing knew that already.
Sunday’s race saw just 719,000 viewers tune in, with it starting within 10 minutes of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono – and that was also on USA Network, a NBC company. I could type 3,000 words on what kind of a decision it was to schedule the two tours head-to-head when your a ‘top-tier’ TV company and you can control both start times, but I think you can gather my thoughts on it.
If NASCAR isn’t on at the same time, many more tune in, but that’s part of this battle for popularity and the spot that IndyCar is in at the moment.
This will be used as a bookmark in the future, if all goes according to plan for IndyCar (listen to the full Speed Street podcast episode with Rahal, for extensive context here).
But for those that were at the track this weekend, I think it can be pretty well agreed upon that IndyCar knocked a Kyle Schwarber home run out of Wrigley field that hasn’t landed yet.
Keep hitting the moon shots, and the MVP votes will come. IndyCar’s already got mine.
