Food City Dirt Race at Bristol Motor Speedway becomes one of the most-watched NASCAR events in 2022 season

NASCAR returned to the Bristol Motor Speedway dirt track over the weekend. It was the second event in recent years on dirt and the first for the Next Gen car. Dating back to 2016, the race was the most-watched in Bristol.

Bob Pockrass went on Twitter to post about the viewers of the event and he termed it the most-watched event. He highlighted that:

“From FOX PR: The 4.007 million viewers was 28% over last year’s Bristol race that was run on a Monday and drew 3.122 million viewers.”

The Truck Series event drew 1,167,000 viewers on Saturday night, whereas on Easter Sunday, an average of 4,007,000 people turned in to watch the Cup Series. The race under lights was postponed twice due to the weather. Kyle Busch won the race when the leaders collided in the last corner.

Compared with the viewership of last season's race at Bristol Motor Speedway, it earned a rating of 1.20 with 2.20 million viewers. In 2021, Adam Stern compared the viewership with that of 2020, where he stated:

“NBCSN earned a rating of 1.20 and 2.20 million viewers for Saturday night's #BassProNRANightRace, basically flat from last year; the rating was slightly down (1.24 in 2020) but viewership was slightly up (2.13 million in 2020).”

The Cup race was the week's fourth most-watched sporting event. All three games in the top three were NBA playoff games. For comparison, the Brooklyn Nets vs. Boston Celtics game on Sunday afternoon drew 6,895,000 viewers.

Rain interrupted the Food City Dirt Race which brought confusion to NASCAR drivers about rules

Due to a weather postponement, last year's Bristol dirt race was broadcast on a Monday in mid-April.

This year's race was once again hampered by weather, with two rain delays, but NASCAR was able to finish the race on Sunday night. This was NASCAR's first Easter Sunday race since 1989.

It happened towards the end of stage two, when the rain came. Since the rules were clearly written out, there should have been no confusion about who was running where, but the weather delay and subsequent pit strategy threw a wrench in the works.

Drivers were unsure where they would finish if the race didn't resume and where they would be running if it did.