By alley - May 2, 2017, 12:15 PM ET

TV Ratings: Phoenix IndyCar, Richmond NASCAR, Russia F1

The on-track action from the Verizon IndyCar Series

came under fire

for Saturday night's race at Phoenix International Raceway, and the TV audience also was a downer. NBCSN's live telecast earned a 0.21 rating, averaging 343,000 household viewers. That's down from a 0.26/402,000 for this race last year on the same network.

NASCAR's Monster Energy Cup Series race at Richmond scored a 2.88 on FOX, averaging 4.6m viewers. That's slightly down from last year's 3.06/4.7m, also on FOX.

The NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Richmond scored a 0.73/1.1m, down a tick from last year's 0.81/1.2m on FOX Sports 1.

With the benefit of a slightly better start time on Sunday morning for the Russian Grand Prix, Formula 1 enjoyed its best day of 2017 thus far in U.S. audience, scoring a 0.32/521,000 for NBCSN's live telecast.

Also beating the downward trend, NHRA's Mello Yello Drag Racing at Charlotte scored a 0.33/530,000 for its delayed coverage of finals on Sunday night. Last year this event scored a 0.32/475,000, also delayed on FS1.

The Red Bull Global Rallycross event at Memphis, delayed to Sunday afternoon on NBC, scored a 0.34/481,000 viewers.