By alley - Mar 16, 2017, 12:07 PM ET

TV Ratings: St. Pete, Vegas

The 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series got off to a solid if slightly disappointing start TV wise at St. Petersburg. The live telecast on ABC scored a 0.80 rating, averaging 1.2 million household viewers. That's down from a 0.97/1.4m for last year's broadcast on the same network, but up over 2015 (0.6/891,000, also on ABC).

NASCAR's Monster Energy Cup Las Vegas race, which featured a fight afterward, scored a 3.58 rating and averaged 6.0m viewers on FOX, down slightly from

the previous week's numbers in Atlanta

and well off the 4.36/7.3m viewers for the 2016 Cup race at Las Vegas. It will be interesting to see if the fight pushes ratings one way or the other for this weekend...

The NASCAR Xfinity Series race from Las Vegas on Saturday scored a 0.98 rating and averaged 1.6m viewers on FOX Sports 1. That's essentially unchanged from last year's 1.03/1.6m figure for last year's race, which was run the week after Daytona.