NASCAR president Steve Phelps insists the series doesn\u2019t consider Formula 1 and IndyCar to be direct rivals in the United States.<\/p>\n
The NASCAR Cup Series remains the most popular motorsport championship in the country, with its average TV viewership far surpassing that of F1<\/a> or its smaller counterpart, IndyCar<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although F1 has firmly established itself in the US under Liberty Media\u2019s ownership, staging races in Austin, Miami, and Las Vegas, NASCAR continues to draw significantly more viewers each year.<\/p>\n However, Phelps has made it clear he doesn\u2019t view F1, IndyCar, or any other racing championship as the series’ main competition.<\/p>\n Instead, in a world where viewing habits are constantly evolving, Phelps believes NASCAR is competing with all forms of entertainment.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, for us, I actually don\u2019t view them as competitors,\u201d he said of F1 and IndyCar in an interview with CNBC.<\/p>\n \u201cOur competitors, I view as more holistically. And I think it\u2019s really not just motorsports, actually not even just sports, it\u2019s entertainment. And we are competing for that dollar.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are competing for your time and other people\u2019s time because if they\u2019re not watching NASCAR, are they watching Netflix? Are they watching movies? Are they watching CNBC?<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are they doing when they\u2019re not doing that? So it\u2019s super competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month\u2019s Mexico City event marked the first time NASCAR hosted a points-paying Cup race outside of the US since 1958.<\/p>\n NASCAR already runs regional championships in Mexico, Canada and Europe, although they are not quite as popular as its three national series in the US: Cup, Xfinity and Truck.<\/p>\n Phelps stressed the importance of expanding NASCAR\u2019s international footprint.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that global expansion for us is important,\u201d he said. \u201cLike most people don\u2019t know is we have four racing series around the globe.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a series in Canada. We have a series of Mexico. We have a series in Brazil and we have a series in Europe. All meant to do three things: driver development.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, getting drivers from other countries to come to our national series, like Daniel Suarez, who graduated from our Mexico series and then went up and raced in our national series and has won races in our national series. He was our Xfinity Series champion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR president Steve Phelps insists the series doesn\u2019t consider Formula 1 and IndyCar to be direct rivals in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[425,99],"class_list":["post-18986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}