NASCAR’s dramatic regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway didn’t just deliver on the track. It delivered for NBC, too.
Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 averaged 3.509 million viewers on NBC and earned a 1.83 television rating, according to figures reported by Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern.
Both numbers were up from the same race one year ago.
The 2025 Daytona summer race averaged approximately 3.3 million viewers and posted a 1.76 rating on NBC. That means this year’s broadcast increased 6% in viewership and 4% in rating year over year.
For NASCAR, the increase is particularly notable because it comes one year after the Daytona regular-season finale moved in the opposite direction.
More Than 3.5 Million Watched NASCAR’s Daytona Finale
The summer Daytona race has traditionally been one of NASCAR’s stronger television draws, but its audience slipped in 2025.
Ryan Blaney’s victory in last year’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 drew 3.297 million viewers, down from approximately 3.5 million for the 2024 edition. The 2025 race also fell from a 1.95 rating in 2024 to 1.76.
NASCAR regained that lost ground this time around.
The 2026 audience of 3.509 million was roughly 212,000 viewers larger than last year’s audience. More importantly, it brought the event essentially back to its 2024 viewership level.
And NASCAR gave those viewers plenty of reason to stick around.
Daytona represented the final opportunity to settle the 16-driver field for NASCAR’s newly revamped Chase. Ryan Preece arrived at the track 31 points below the postseason cutline, leaving his championship hopes hanging by a thread.
By the end of the night, he had completely rewritten the picture.
Preece passed Zane Smith on the final lap of overtime before a crash behind the leaders froze the field, giving the RFK Racing driver his first career Cup Series victory in his 249th start.
The win also vaulted Preece into the 16th and final Chase position, knocking Shane van Gisbergen out of the postseason.
It was exactly the kind of high-stakes finish NASCAR hoped Daytona could produce as the final race of its 26-event regular season.
Daytona Reverses NASCAR’s Year-Over-Year Ratings Decline
The year-over-year comparison makes Saturday night’s number more meaningful than the raw audience alone.
The Daytona summer race drew approximately:
- 2024: 3.5 million viewers
- 2025: 3.297 million viewers
- 2026: 3.509 million viewers
All three races aired on NBC.
That makes for a relatively clean comparison, without the significant audience differences that can come when NASCAR races move between broadcast and cable networks.
It also means the 2026 race didn’t merely improve on last season. Daytona effectively recovered the audience it lost a year ago and narrowly surpassed the 2024 mark.
There were plenty of storylines working in NASCAR’s favor.
Five drivers entered Daytona still mathematically alive for the final three Chase positions, while the unpredictability of superspeedway racing kept the cutline unsettled deep into the night. The race eventually delivered exactly the sort of outcome that made the stakes matter, with a driver entering below the cutline winning his way into the final Chase position.
Now NASCAR takes that momentum into the postseason.
The 10-race Chase begins Sunday, Sept. 6, with the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Denny Hamlin enters as the championship leader, but after more than 3.5 million viewers watched the regular season end in chaos at Daytona, NASCAR will hope some of that audience follows the championship fight all the way to Homestead.