How much should New Hampshire Motor Speedway viewership numbers scare NASCAR?
The subject of TV ratings have been a point of conversation for nearly the entire 2025 season, but it was highlighted yet again this week after the returns from the NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last weekend.
The numbers are plain to see: Its .7 rating is a significant drop off from the year before at NHMS, which wasn’t even a playoff race.
There are numerous factors that have contributed to the decline in viewership, such as competition, no consistent home networks or streaming services for the sport, the general lack of entertaining races and so forth. We could wax poetic all day about the ongoing practices of the sport, but if we did, it would leave out the elephant in the room.
Why hasn’t NASCAR said anything? The governing body of the sport likely sees these numbers sooner than any of us do. Just a few years ago, there was no dimension in the galaxy where Formula 1 caught up to NASCAR viewership numbers, but this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix saw U.S. viewership jump to 1.1 million, dangerously close to beating out not only a Cup race but also a playoff event.
Realistically, if numbers continue to decline year over year, there could be a weekend in the not-so-distant future that sees a Cup race drop below 1 million viewers. If this year’s trend repeats in 2026 and this specific race sees another 25% decrease, it could spell more trouble for the sport.
I should mention, though, that there are some caveats at play. First, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was held at 7 a.m. ET, before any NFL action took place, whereas the Cup race went head-to-head with Sunday football. Then during the same window, the Charlie Kirk memorial drew another 5 million viewers. There’s more than just a little bit of crossover among those three audiences, so there’s still some room to breathe before making drastic changes.
The bottom line is this, though: If viewership continues to plummet, NASCAR will not have Sunday football or anything else to blame in the future. There are problems all around the sport, but none should be contributing to this immense downward spiral that NASCAR has found itself in, while F1 can only seem to go upward.
The real problem, whatever it might be, needs to be stated, addressed and remedied in a hurry, or else darker days lie ahead.
2. Has Team Penske found its playoff gear?
With Ryan Blaney’s win at New Hampshire, the Penske boys secured their first win of the playoffs in relatively dominant fashion. That locks Blaney into the first round while three-time Cup champion Joey Logano has found his groove, despite not parking in victory lane just yet.
With Penske winning the last three championships, this all feels like a movie we’ve seen before. The Penske cars show good speed throughout the regular season, but nothing groundbreaking. Then when the playoffs hit, they’re unbeatable.
Is that the case this season? If you’re leaning yes, there’s good evidence to back that up. For instance, New Hampshire requires the same aero and tire package as Phoenix Raceway. Does that mean itsimply can’t be beaten at Phoenix? Well, that depends who you ask. In the spec car of all spec cars that is the Next Gen platform, it’s a tough answer.
Yes, these cars seem to have an aversion to passing, and no, that doesn’t change all that much from race to race. But there are still plenty of variables at play, particularly the type of variables with Toyota badges on their hoods.
Plenty of other drivers showed speed at New Hampshire, and Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin put on an absolute clinic at Phoenix earlier this season. Of course that was then and this is now, but the point still stands: It ain’t over by a long shot.
The Penske cars were always going to be in the hunt as time wound down this season, as Hendrick Motorsports more than likely wants to put this year behind it and start fresh in 2026. It’s not crazy to say that we could see a pair of Toyotas and a pair of Fords in the Championship 4 in a few weeks, and in fact, I predict that we will.
When that happens, all bets are off. You couldn’t pick a clear favorite if you tried, but alas, some will. It just won’t be me.
3. Does New Hampshire signify a turning point for Shane van Gisbergen?
The knock on Shane van Gisbergen thus far is that he simply can’t compete with the field when it comes to oval racing or that he’s only a viable driver at road courses.
However, there’s something about professional racecar drivers that some tend to forget: They can figure out how to drive just about anything anywhere. Last weekend was the most comfortable van Gisbergen looked on a track of this sort during his entire tenure in NASCAR thus far.
The trick for the New Zealander was always going to be the 1.5-mile and short tracks. On a road course, there are not many that can hold a candle to him on the Cup level, and superspeedways are as big of a crapshoot as they come. New Hampshire sits at just over 1 mile long and is one of the more difficult configurations on the schedule, but van Gisbergen looked right at home.
So what does that mean for him going forward? Not much yet. The jury is still out on whether this was a lucky day that saw a lot of things come together or the real-time playing out of an “a-ha!” moment. Van Gisbergen could go out this weekend and look the same as before and nobody would bat an eye.
If he does the opposite, though, and hits the ground running, the Cup Series could be in for quite the future surprise from NASCAR’s favorite former Supercars superstar.
4. What does the Rodney Childers signing mean for JR Motorsports?
In the biggest piece of the mid-week news cycle, it was announced that longtime Cup crew chief Rodney Childers will join JR Motorsports for the 2026 season to sit atop the pit boxes of Connor Zilisch and Carson Kvapil as the two run the No. 1 in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series next year.
There are three key takeaways from this news, and there’s no sense in breaking them all down at once, so here goes my attempt to follow a strict three-point format.
First and foremost, this announcement means that JRM is still most definitely serious about staying atop the totem poll in the O’Reilly Series. Some have speculated that just because Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been openly adamant about going Cup racing in the future that the Xfinity team would take a back seat if charters were to be made available, which is still in limbo pending plenty of legal action.
In bringing on Childers, JRM has a crew chief in-house that could make a seamless jump to the Cup side of the operation, considering he was crew chief in the Cup Series only just this season. In the meantime, though, Childers’ expertise in setting up the Gen 6 car should play well into setting up the O’Reilly cars, which are incredibly similar. It’s a win-win.
Second, it means that Kvapil will currently only be running a part-time schedule in the O’Reilly Series next year, at least in the No. 1. It was rumored several times throughout the season that Kvapil would be suiting up full time for Penske in 2026, but this announcement goes to show that might not be the case. After a stellar showing this season that currently has him fourth in the standings, it’s a head scratcher to say the least. Silly Season may have more in store for us just yet.
Finally, it signifies that Zilisch isn’t only going Cup racing in 2026, which is a good thing. He’s one of the sport’s brightest young stars and most certainly has a future ahead of him, but any rookie jumping head first into Cup racing has their work cut out for them. If he can keep his confidence up throughout the year with some O’Reilly wins while bringing in sponsorship money for JRM, that’s the exact thing that JRM is going to take advantage of.
As time passes, we’ll learn more about what JRM’s lineup will look like next season, but for now, it’s just made a home-run hire and should be very pleased with the direction the team is headed.
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.