NASCAR got in on the Netflix docuseries action earlier this year with the release of “Full Speed,” which was five parts and followed some of the playoff drivers in their push through the 2023 postseason. Unsurprisingly, there’s been an increase in the NASCAR television ratings early in the 2024 season and most attribute that to the docuseries, much like what F1 experienced several years ago when its “Drive to Survive” came out.
While both more motorsports saw fan interest dramatically uptick following the release of each respective docuseries, there’s a single stat in NASCAR that offers a good indicator of why that interest won’t wane in the future like it has with F1. It’s a simple stat and it’s measured in seconds.
NASCAR Margin of Victory
NASCAR is known for close finishes, but the 2024 season has delivered time and time again and in dramatic fashion.
It started at the season-opening Daytona 500, which saw William Byron edge his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman by a razor-thin margin of .006. The following weekend, Atlanta said hold my beer as the 1.5-mile hybrid superspeedway produced one of the most thrilling finishes when Daniel Suarez ended an entertaining race with a three-wide photo finish, his car finishing .003 ahead of Ryan Blaney for the third-closest finish in the sport’s 76-year history. Kyle Busch finished .007 behind.
The following week at Las Vas provided another entertaining race where Kyle Larson pulled out to an advantage, but Tyler Reddick reeled him in at the end of each stage and the race, but still came up short, finishing .441 behind the 2021 Cup champion when the checkered flag waved.
In Week 4 at Phoenix, Christopher Bell was one of the front-running Toyotas and stunk up the show, winning by the largest margin of the year at 5.465 over second-place Chris Buescher.
And finally, in the most-recent race at Bristol, Denny Hamlin held off his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. in a wild day affected by excessive tire wear and won by 1.083.
As the graphic indicates, when you combine all of those margins of victory together, it totals just shy of seven seconds at 6.998.
Now, when you compare that number of all five races combined with the first two F1 races of the season and it’s pretty eye-opening. Max Verstappen has won the first pair of races by 22 and 13 seconds, respectively, at Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
In other words, there’s not even a comparison between the two motorsports when it comes to finishes and margins of victory. Another item of note — each NASCAR race has had a different winner.
So new fans might be tuning into NASCAR for the 2024 season because the Netflix docuseries got their attention like it did with F1 several years ago, but based on the overall racing product, it would make sense that these folks will stay interested in NASCAR simply because, like most sports, there’s uncertainty before each race about who is going to win, and as we’ve seen throughout the first five races, whoever it is, it’s going to be a finish so close we might not know who it is until we have a look at a stop-action photo.