TV ratings: COTA, Saudi Arabia

NASCAR went road racing for the first time in 2022, with FOX's telecast of the NASCAR Cup Series race at COTA averaging a 2.18 Nielsen rating and 3.731 million viewers per numbers from ShowBuzzDaily.com. That's a hefty boost from last year's rain-impacted race which aired on FS1 and averaged 2.37m viewers, although down from the previous week's oval numbers from Atlanta (2.36/4m).

Saturday afternoon's Xfinity Series race at COTA on FS1 averaged 0.64/1.075m, down only slightly from the previous week's 0.66/1.123m, while Camping World Trucks averaged 0.42/719,000 on FS1, compared to 0.51/841,000 for Atlanta which also preceded the Xfinity Series event.

The second Formula 1 race of the season continued the series' strong momentum from the previous week's opener. ESPN's telecast of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix averaged 0.79/1.445m viewers. That was up from last week's 0.75/1.353m for the Bahrain GP and far ahead of the Bahrain race that aired on this weekend last year (0.53/879,000 on ESPN2). It also continued to show strongly in the 18-49 demographic, with NASCAR's Cup race garnering 758,000 in that age group -- up from the previous week's oval race, despite the latter's higher rating -- to F1's 649K.

Monster Energy Supercross action from Seattle averaged 0.15/324,000 viewers on the USA network Saturday night.