After a bit of a soft start, the NTT IndyCar Series fared more strongly with TV audiences for its second race of the season — which this time around got a near two-hour jump on its over-the-air network racing rivals at NASCAR.

Sunday afternoon’s telecast of the St. Petersburg GP on NBC averaged a 0.77 Nielsen rating and 1.2 million viewers. That’s a step up from the 0.59/914,000 that watched the opening IndyCar round at Barber Motorsports Park, and a substantial increase over the 676,000 viewers for last year’s St. Pete race, which ran in October as the season finale. NBC reports that its Total Audience Delivery for this year’s race (counting OTA and digital viewers) was 1.225 million viewers, making it NBC Sports’ most-watched afternoon IndyCar race ever, second-most watched overall behind 2020’s Texas race, which aired in primetime (1.256m).

The NASCAR Cup Series also had a strong audience for Sunday’s race at Talladega, which averaged a 2.81/4.7 million viewers on FOX. That’s up from the previous week’s 2.0/3.3m and also slightly up from the 2019 Talladega spring race that ran on the same weekend (2.79/4.5m).

NASCAR’s Xfinity Series race at Talladega averaged a 1.04/1.6m on FOX Saturday afternoon, compared to a 0.63/988,000 for 2019’s spring Talladega race on FS1.

The ARCA Menards Series race at Talladega that preceded the Xfinity race on FS1 averaged a 0.29/471,000 viewers.

Monster Energy Supercross From Salt Lake City on NBCSN Saturday night averaged a 0.14/245,000 viewers.