There’s quite a bit of excitement surrounding the 2026 NASCAR National Series campaign, and the ratings for Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway seem to deliver that point well.
On Thursday, FOX Sports released the official ratings numbers for the 2026 DAYTONA 500, the 68th running of the event, which garnered an average viewership of 7.489 million viewers — a year-over-year increase of 11%.
It’s the most-watched DAYTONA 500 since 2023, which averaged 8.173 million viewers. Both the 2024 and 2024 editions of ‘The Great American Race’ were thwarted by weather delays.
FOX says that the peak viewership of the DAYTONA 500 came between 5:30 PM ET and 5:45 PM ET, when the broadcast had a total of 9.154 million viewers, the highest peak viewership since 2024, which reached over 10M.
Tyler Reddick, driver of the No. 45 Toyota Camry XSE for 23XI Racing, notched the victory in the DAYTONA 500 after making a dramatic final corner pass on NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver, Chase Elliott.
Reddick, a native of Corning, California, was joined in Victory Lane by team owner Michael Jordan, an NBA legend, and Denny Hamlin, a future NASCAR Hall of Fame driver.
Those weren’t the only positive television numbers for the weekend, either.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event at Daytona International Speedway, dubbed the Fresh From Florida 250, scored a solid 1.387 million viewers, up from just over one million viewers last year. It’s the most-watched event in the series since 2016.
That likely had something to do with all the star power in the field for Friday’s event, with three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Tony Stewart making a return to the series for a one-off, plus Travis Pastrana and Cleetus McFarland in the field.
? Big trucks, big numbers! Friday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season opener on FS1 from Daytona drove a +37% average viewership increase over 2025 (1,387,000 viewers vs. 1,014,000)! ?
?Most-watched Truck Series race since 2016
?1,604,000 peak viewership (9:45-10:00 PM… pic.twitter.com/pAlstqhjMW
— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) February 18, 2026
Chandler Smith went to Victory Lane in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season-opener at Daytona, after a four-wide finish that included Gio Ruggiero, Christian Eckes, and John Hunter Nemechek, which ended with the Front Row Motorsports driver parking it in Victory Lane.
In the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, the United Rentals 300, the event picked up a pretty equal rating from the year before, posting an average of 1.812 million viewers, but had an increased peak viewership (up more than 100,000) of 2,321,000.
— The CW Sports (@TheCW_Sports) February 18, 2026
Richard Childress Racing driver Austin Hill went to Victory Lane in the season-opener for NASCAR’s second-tier division, after he and teammate Jesse Love (the series’ defending champion) dominated the event.
Next, the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series head to EchoPark Speedway (formerly known as Atlanta Motor Speedway) where they’ll all look to keep their numbers as close to the season-opening totals as possible.
