NASCAR seems to be on the track to dominate the TV ratings after a thrilling race show at Texas Motor Speedway. After fighting tooth and nail, Chase Elliott finally secured his first Cup Series win after 42 attempts. Compared to the uneventful show at Martinsville, the mile-and-a-half race at Texas was a thrilling affair.

After averaging some 4 million views per race, the race that saw Hendrick Motorsports drivers finish 1-2-3 could only garner 2.19 million views. With these numbers, it looked like NASCAR’s healthy run on TV had come to an end and the views might decline even further. However, fortunately, that’s not the case. The Texas race got 2.310 million views, which was a big improvement when compared to last year’s event on the same date.

NASCAR Cup Series race in Texas delivering the goods

The Cup Series races had been topping the charts in terms of attracting the most views among the sporting events. So the Martinsville race’s stale performance, both on the racetrack and on TV, was concerning. But the Texas race has now bounced back with a good number, thus continuing the trend of rising viewership.

In direct comparison with the Martinsville race last year, this was a 4% increase. The 2023 Martinsville race got 2,219,000 views. The Texas race even hit a peak viewership count of 2,881,000; it was also the number one watched event on cable during the time of the race. Charlotte, Greensboro, and Indianapolis were the biggest contributors to the viewership count.

Adam Stern shared the statistics on TV viewership for Sunday’s Cup Series race via X, “@FS1 got 2.310 million viewers for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas; there’s no direct comparison to last year since @TXMotorSpeedway was held during the playoffs in fall of 2023, but that event got 2.0 million viewers on @USANetwork.”

The event was chaotic and full of incidents, but it was a huge stepping stone for Chase Elliott, who nabbed his first win after a winless drought.

Elliott was optimistic about his chances in Texas

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In eighteen Cup victories, the HMS driver had never won at the mile-and-half intermediate track in Fort Worth. Not only that, he didn’t have a top-five finish at the venue in the Next Gen era. Qualifying wasn’t great either, he started the race in the 24th spot, thus making his chances ever so slim for the win. However, his aggression on the racetrack and ability to stay in the lead despite the pressure handed him his long-awaited win.

“I actually was optimistic coming into the day and just felt like if we could ever get some track position and get going forward, we would maybe be able to get into the mix. Everything just kind of went our way, we got the caution early on, flip the track position, got us up in the top 10. Had a couple of good restarts and a couple of good pitstops. Just hung around really and got to the end,” Elliot said via NASCAR.

Now with three consecutive top-five finishes and a win to show for his efforts, Elliott is indeed growing to be the surprise title contender for this season.