Over the past 4 decades, Irish audiences have been slowly drawn over time to the allure of American sports, with the NFL gaining having gathered a large audience gradually since the Super Bowl was first shown on RTE in the early 80s, culminating now with a regular season match-up featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers in Croke Park later this year.
NBA Basketball has also built-up a large following in the same time period, while Ice Hockey has a consistent audience with the Belfast Giants playing in the EIHL. Meanwhile, the Yankee hat is still seen on heads across the country as a fashion symbol, while Major League Baseball is played in the London Stadium every June.
But there is still one major series that hasn’t quite cracked the public conscience here in Ireland or even western Europe for the most part, and that is NASCAR, the premier sanctioning body for Stock Car racing in the world.
The NASCAR Cup Series, the top division of the umbrella of wider NASCAR, boasts 36 full time drivers across 15 teams and 3 car manufacturers who race 38 races in the span of 39 weekends in a row, a feat that is not seen anywhere else in world motorsport.
These drivers come from all sorts of backgrounds, with the grassroots side of US Auto Racing being so varied, which lends itself to interesting races across the most varied calendar in major world motorsport. Series regular and race winner Shane Van Gisbergen is already an Australian racing legend while the next big talent Connor Zillisch has come from a small background racing Mazadas around the IMSA circuit to being Red Bull’s biggest prospect since Max Verstappen.
The Cup series takes trips to some of motorsport’s most iconic venues, including the famous Daytona Motor Speedway for the biggest race of the season in the Daytona 500, while also taking a yearly pilgrimage to the most revered track, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the winner gets to kiss the line of bricks when they take victory.
Not only do they go to some of the best speedways the US has to offer, they will also take a trip to Mexico City to run a race on the F1 track for the first time in the 77-year history of the series, as well as a third go to the streets of downtown Chicago, a fantastic event I got an opportunity to attend last year, although sadly for the second year in a row, monsoon-like rain created a washout and drove fans like me clamouring for our own televisions to watch the end of the race in dry space.
While the tracks have plenty of character that takes all the best parts of ‘Americana’ and presents it to us every weekend, the drivers are ultimately the ones who take centre stage. Hardened drivers like Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have given us some of the best moments over the past 2 decades, never holding back their aggression and loving when the crowd of fans turn against them when they move fan favourite drivers out of the way for wins.
Fan favourites like Bubba Wallace and Chase Elliott continue to impress their fanbases week on week who proudly wear their team merchandise in the stands. Some drivers even come from racing families. Elliott, who won the 2020 championship for the famous Hendrick Motorsports team, is the son of former Cup Series Champion Bill Elliott, while 2023 champion Ryan Blaney is the son of journey-man Dave Blaney.
The ultra-professional teams are the ones who give us the best action, with the aforementioned Hendrick team dominating the late 90s and early 00s with household names like Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson winning championships and fulfilling the ‘American Dream’. However, the last 3 Cup Series Championships have been claimed by the historic Team Penske, the team that has won in Formula 1, Sports Cars and hold the record for the most Indianapolis 500 titles.
All of these elements take centre stage every Sunday, with NASCAR being a mainstay on famous sports networks such as NBC, FOX and TNT, who present us with some of the most exciting action every week. 4 of the top 10 closest finishes in series history occurred last season, with a famous 3-wide finish in Atlanta being won by only a margin of 0.003 seconds.
While the complaints and the drawbacks of European viewing of American Sports are often drawn from the number of breaks in coverage and the high amount of advertising, NASCAR doesn’t fall into this category as much. With the majority of the ad-breaks occurring in a split screen window amongst the racing, and the racing never takes a break unless the conditions such as rain do not permit it.
If you think High octane action, fast racing, great backdrops that embody the American spirit and a colourful cast of characters that entertain every week, then NASCAR may just be your new favourite weekly sports league. NASCAR can be viewed on Premier Sports here in Ireland and streamed on the official NASCAR YouTube channel in other countries.
