The ratings are in for NASCAR’s trip to Martinsville over the weekend, a race which was won by William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports.
According to Adam Stern of the Sports Business Journal , the CookOut 400 at Martinsville accumulated 2.191 million viewers. He noted that the number is only a little off from last season’s iteration, the race which featured Chase Elliott’s return to NASCAR.
With the competition NASCAR faced on Sunday, with the 2024 Women’s NCAA Tournament finale between Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes and the South Carolina Gamecocks drawing 18.7 viewers, Stern noted it’s a more than commendable number for the Cup Series.
“@FS1 got 2.191 million viewers for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville, nearly flat from 2.218 million viewers last year (the race @ChaseElliott returned from injury) despite immense competition from the @WFinalFour championship game, which got 18.7 million viewers,” Stern posted on X.
Alas, it was another strong weekend for NASCAR, as 2024 has proven fruitful for the sport thus far. We’ll see if that continues next weekend, as the Cup Series moves forward to Texas Motor Speedway next Sunday.
Chase Elliott breaks down final restart at Martinsville: ‘Go for the win or nothing’
On Sunday Chase Elliott had his best run of the season and ended up finishing P3 in a Martinsville race defined by Hendrick Motorsports. The NASCAR champion had a shot to win, but couldn’t make it happen.
After the race, Elliott talked about his teammate’s strong run. He isn’t sure what the difference was. Byron just had something everyone else lacked.
“I don’t know, he was super good. Credit to him because he passed his way all the way to the lead,” Elliott said, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “It wasn’t like he did it on pit road or anything, he just flat-out drove by us all. So, after the cycle and he came back out I saw him coming. I’m like, ‘Man this is going to be tough, he’s way better than anybody else I’ve been around all day.’ And he did a great job with whatever they had working. I don’t know why, maybe it was just him, maybe he just did a better job today than the rest of us.”
As for that final restart, Chase Elliott was aggressive. He got physical with the 24 car, but couldn’t make the move he wanted to make. At that point, he didn’t care if he was P2 or P3, just going for the win. Whatever happens after, oh well.
“Sure we came off four there in the zone, I had an okay jump, just couldn’t make it stick there on the outside,” he continued. “Got into three and tried to root him up off the bottom and went to get the power down to get up underneath him and I just couldn’t do it and then I tried to run in really hard into one and roll a little bit of a diamond, and couldn’t make that stick either. So, at that point, I figured what was second or third who cares at that point, you try to go for the win or nothing.”
On3’s Jonathan Howard contributed to this article.
More must-reads: