The 2025 season of NASCAR has been a mixed bag for the sport, particularly when talking about fan engagement. While certain races have seen a significant uptick in viewership numbers, many others have lost out on their audience. Meanwhile, F1 has seen a steady growth in its viewership numbers, with almost every race giving close competition to NASCAR’s numbers.
While NASCAR continues to hold the edge over F1, it might not be long before the latter overtakes NASCAR’s numbers. And to avoid that happening, Bubba Wallace knows what NASCAR needs to do.
Bubba Wallace Shares His Take on What NASCAR Can Do To Boost Its Popularity
Once dismissed as a niche in the European circuits, Formula One’s popularity in the global market is rising, and it’s now making inroads in the American market. Veteran journalist Toby Christie recently sounded the alarm on social media after new viewership ratings data highlighted how narrow the NASCAR-Formula 1 gap is becoming.
Owing to the same, how to boost the sport’s dying popularity remains a burning question within the NASCAR realm.
The 2025 Brickyard 400 winner recently faced the same question while speaking to The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck, and he revealed his take on what NASCAR can do to avoid losing to F1.
He feels the sport is “very inside of our own four walls, and that’s it.” Drawing parallels with the F1 drivers, Wallace added, “You can take Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen and drop them anywhere in the world and people go crazy, right? You drop myself, or Chase Elliott, or Ryan Blaney in London, and no one knows who we are. You drop us in New York City, and maybe we will get one or two people, right?”
Wallace’s words don’t paint a pretty future for NASCAR, and there isn’t much that can be done about it, unless NASCAR changes its ways.
Notably, though, the sport did take a step in the right direction earlier this year, airing five of its races on OTT giant Prime Video. While NASCAR lost a significant chunk of its regular viewership, the sport still tapped into a previously untapped younger audience.
As such, several more changes in the right direction might prove to be the key in helping NASCAR unlock the secret to keeping its crown within the American audience.