“They don’t even pass”: NASCAR veteran reacts to F1’s significant drop in popularity after Las Vegas GP

NASCAR veteran Kenny Wallace has opined that Formula 1's popularity suffered a dip after the Las Vegas GP. The race that witnessed Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing bagging his fourth consecutive championship title had lower viewership numbers than last year’s race.

Wallace, a 61-year-old resident of St. Louis, Missouri, is a former NASCAR driver with over 20 years of experience. He amassed nine race wins throughout his career, all in the Xfinity Series. The American has also been a reporter for NASCAR on FOX.

Wallace, an ardent follower of F1, was disappointed when journalist Adam Stern reported:

“ESPN got 905,000 viewers for the #LasVegasGP on Saturday night/Sunday morning, down from 1.3 million last year.”

Wallace said he has decided not to watch Formula One anymore, noting that as opposed to NASCAR, F1 doesn’t allow passing at will. He spoke about the sport's strict rules in F1 on how a driver can attack, pass, or defend their opponents depending on the kind of turn.

“That’s it. Formula One is failing. I am never watching again. They don’t even even pass,” Wallace said.

Meanwhile, NASCAR’s regular season engagement for 2024 rose to an average of 3.13 million, a significant increase from last year’s numbers. As per Black Book Motorsport, the playoffs finished with “a viewership average of 2.3 million, a five percent increase on the 2023 figure of 2.2 million.”

Kenny Wallace theorizes why F1 hosts its races so late at night

Since 2008, Formula One has been resorting to night races. This year alone, there were six night races on the F1 calendar, with the Las Vegas GP kicking off at 1 a.m. ET. One might ask why F1 starts its races so late at night.

In a recent episode of Coffee with Kenny, Kenny Wallace gave his take on F1’s nocturnal schedule and also why the Las Vegas Grand Prix was scheduled so.

“I think the reason they run that Vegas race so late at night is because they shut a lot of the streets down,” Kenny Wallace said. “You know, that's a short race. When you look at that Formula One race, that's a really short race. And I think that's another reason people are liking Formula One now. I'm hearing the reason they run that race so late is because they shut the city down pretty much late at night.”

Last year, Las Vegas Grand Prix CEO Renee Wilm talked about the sport’s decision to hold races late at night:

“That was actually a compromise to make sure we are broadcasting at a time when our European fans can get up with a cup of coffee and watch the race [at] six, seven in the morning, very similar to how we [in the US] watch the European races. So that was actually a very important component of planning out our sequencing for the race weekend."

Despite that, and despite lower ticket prices, the views for last week’s Las Vegas GP dropped, as Stern said in his post. It's worth mentioning that the starting time of the event could have been inconvenient for the fans residing on the East Coast of the US.