NASCAR made headlines this past weekend as drivers Carson Hocevar and Ryan Blaney engaged in a fight following the Bass Pro Shops Bristol Night Race. The attention, which generated significant exposure even outside traditional motorsports media, seemed especially noteworthy, according to data to be released today by the Sports Poll by SSRS, because NASCAR drivers don’t enjoy the same crossover appeal in mainstream America that they did in the past.
The poll was founded in 1994 by Rich Luker and has been featured in SBJ since the magazine’s December 1997 prototype.
The biggest change over this time, according to Chad Menefee, the research company’s EVP of strategic intelligence, is the rise of fans who have no favorite driver.
“In 2009, 31% of fans didn’t have a favorite driver. Today, that number sits at 64%. The most popular drivers from the early 2000s all walked away between 2015 and 2020, and younger drivers haven’t resonated in the same way.”
No driver has topped the 5% plateau since Dale Earnhardt Jr. hit 16% in 2017.
To put it in perspective, NASCAR’s five most-popular drivers January through August of this year — Kyle Busch (who died in June), Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, and Bubba Wallace — were selected as the favorite driver by a combined total of 17% of the survey’s 6,479 fans.
The decline is important because connecting with a favorite driver is one of the primary reasons fans engage.
“It’s also a critical building block for attracting new fans,” Menefee said. “If more people can see drivers’ personalities (even in a post-race fight), it could help reverse the trend. After all, it was a fight between Cale Yarborough and the Allison brothers in 1979 that helped spark the sport’s growth nationally.”
Menefee is a member of SBJ’s Forty Under 40 Class of 2019.