“Sport is geared up for you to watch it on TV,” said veteran racer Kenny Wallace. His comments came days after the 2025 Brickyard 400, which unsurprisingly saw a dip in attendance compared to last year’s iteration. That was expected though, as over 70,000 fans made their way to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2024 when NASCAR returned to the iconic oval layout after three long years at the infield road course. Naturally, the excitement was high, and the track saw its highest race day attendance since at least 2018.

The decline in attendance was inevitable. Considering the intense heat, and the lingering weather concerns due to rain, many fans opted to sit this one out and caught up with the action on their televisions instead. But is that really a decline in ‘viewership’?

NASCAR insider defends the Brickyard race

Let’s be clear, the Brickyard race was never going to have the kind of fan attendance like the Indy 500. After all, Indianapolis Motor Speedway can accommodate over 250,000 fans at a time, making it the highest-capacity sports venue in the world. Yet, figures around the 70,000 mark were as per NASCAR’s expectations, even though the race sold fewer tickets compared to last year. But the visibly empty grandstands had many fans questioning the choice of venue.

However, The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck wasn’t having it. The NASCAR journalist candidly said on ‘The Teardown’ podcast, “That’s crazy. The trade-off of racing here has always been this. This is the most prestigious oval on the planet. Period. This place is magical. This place is dripping with legacy and lore and just all the history. So that’s why you come here.” He also went on to say, “You know where you’re getting 250,000 for a NASCAR race these days? Nowhere. You could put 250,000 seats at Daytona for the 500, and you’re not getting it.”

To make matters worse, a lingering heat wave and the threat of rain kept many fans away from the track. Sitting in such weather conditions for 160 laps and two overtime restarts isn’t easy, but despite the challenging circumstances, 70,000 stock car racing enthusiasts made their way to the venue. To put things into perspective, Iowa Speedway has nearly half the capacity, and social media will be raving about how packed the venue was at the upcoming Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol.

As things stand, it seems like only tracks like Daytona, Talladega, and Charlotte Motor Speedway for the Coca-Cola 600 have a higher attendance. That’s a pretty short list and not unexpected, given the history and prestige of the races at those tracks. A case can be made for the Mexico City race at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez as well, but that was also NASCAR’s first points-paying race outside the United States since 1958.

The numbers will continue to fall

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like fan attendance at the Brickyard race will be improving anytime soon. There’s a reason why NASCAR switched to the infield road course layout to begin with. The summer heat, combined with the Next-Gen car’s limitations, simply doesn’t make it an attractive package for fans to make their way to the track. And given how ginormous the track is, it’ll always look sparsely populated, even if almost 70,000 fans fill up the venue.

Ultimately, the outcry from fans wanting NASCAR to return to Indy’s oval layout far exceeds those who are actually willing to go to the track. Perhaps a return to the Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, or revert back to an Indy street race might be viable options in the long run. Indianapolis Motor Speedway will always be synonymous with the Indy 500, and despite how iconic the oval is, falling numbers might force the sanctioning body to make a difficult decision, eventually.

Formula 1 leaving the IMS isn’t questioned by fans. Perhaps NASCAR will follow suit. When there’s a raging debate on social media whether the Brickyard race is a crown jewel race or not, the answer is there for all to see. The Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500 are undisputed crown-jewel events on the calendar, but the Brickyard 400 simply doesn’t inspire the same belief amongst fans. And that’s where the underlying problem lies.