TV ratings: Detroit, Portland, WWTR

Motorsports was confined to cable last weekend for the final edition of one major race venue and two first-time events at others.

The debut of NASCAR Cup Series racing at World Wide Technology Raceway averaged a 1.47 Nielsen rating and 2.502 million household viewers on FS1, per numbers from ShowBuzzDaily.com. That was up slightly from the previous regular-season race on the cable network – 1.43/2.337m for Kansas last month – and almost identical to the Sonoma road race that Cup ran on this weekend last year (1.49/2.494m), also on FS1.

NASCAR’s Xfinity Series had a standalone race at Portland on Saturday and averaged 0.56/824,000 viewers on FS1, a solid increase over last year’s stand-alone road race at Mid-Ohio on this date (0.47/719K) and the previous Saturday’s Charlotte round (0.46/767K) while the Camping World Truck Series averaged 0.45/663,000 on Saturday afternoon at WWTR, up from a 0.35/590K last time out at Charlotte, which ran on a Friday night. All these races aired on FS1.

Finals of the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series from New Hampshire averaged 0.41/697,000 viewers, a slight drop from last time out at Virginia (0.45/763,000) both on FS1.

After running its first six races of the season on NBC, the NTT IndyCar Series switched to the USA cable network and took a big hit in audience as a result for Sunday’s final Detroit Grand Prix on the Belle Isle Park circuit (the series is switching to a downtown street course next year). The telecast averaged a rating of 0.23 and 354,000 viewers, not counting those who watched via NBC’s Peacock streaming service.

While those numbers are well off the season average, they are a healthy increase on IndyCar’s previous appearance on USA – the first half of 2020’s Indy Harvest GP at Indianapolis, which ran on a Friday in October and averaged just 0.14/221,000. IndyCar has one more race scheduled for USA this year, at WWTR in August, and Peacock-only coverage of next month’s Toronto round, with the other eight events all set for NBC.