IndyCar practice viewership soars 77% as Thermal Club race surpasses St. Petersburg GP

FOX Sports launched several promotional campaigns for IndyCar's 2025 season in late 2024 and earlier this year to generate hype around the sport with its arrival on the network, resulting in a massive viewership surge at this year's season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida. The trend continued at the Thermal Club Grand Prix, where the first practice session's viewership rose by 77 percent from the previous race weekend's.

The Manhattan-based broadcaster made several promos featuring Josef Newgarden, Alex Palou, and Pato O'Ward to generate attention for the sport and even aired advertisements during the costly Super Bowl slot. The efforts paid off as the St. Petersburg Grand Prix saw a 45 percent rise in viewership from the previous year. Moreover, figures rose further on the Thermal Club Grand Prix weekend.

95000 fans logged in to watch the practice session for the St. Petersburg Grand Prix. A massive uptake of 73000 more people was witnessed at the first practice session in Thermal Club, as Marshall Pruett revealed on X:

"The IndyCar practice session from the Thermal Club averaged 168,000 viewers on FS1 Friday at 6:30pm, up 77% from the previous Friday afternoon IndyCar session on FS1 (95,000 on 2/28)."

However, the race day saw broadcasting issues that curtailed fans' access to on-track action at Thermal Club.

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It was not all smooth sailing for the Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix on FOX

Thermal Club, California - Source: Getty

The inaugural Thermal Club Grand Prix suffered a broadcast outage as a production truck suffered an electrical issue, causing no feed to be relayed to the international audience of the race for some time. FOX replaced the blackout with NASCAR's Homestead Miami race as it rushed to fix the issue and tweeted:

"Our INDYCAR production truck has an electrical issue. We are working to get it fixed as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we have NASCAR bonus coverage on FOX and FS1 until the INDYCAR truck is back online."

After an outage of 10-plus laps, the broadcast was restored. Race winner Alex Palou said:

"Thank you, and thank you to all of the fans. I heard there were some issues with the broadcast, so sorry to all the fans, and thank you for sticking with us."

The Spaniard leads the standings with 102 points. The next race will be held in Long Beach on April 13. Scott Dixon is the reigning champion there and will hope to end his teammate's winning streak.