“Our fans are unbelievable”: NASCAR Insider left stunned with the sport’s fanbase after full house Iowa race

Veteran spotter and NASCAR expert, Brett Griffin, recently opened up about the uniqueness of NASCAR's fanbase. Today, NASCAR is one of the most popular forms of competitive sports in America, with an average viewership of 3.85 million on television, as reported by statista.com.

The Cup Series race at the Circuit of The Americas (COTA) in March garnered 3.31 billion viewers, which is six percent more than last year's race. According to blackbookmotorsport.com, it was the fifth straight NASCAR race to witness a year-over-year (YoY) increase in the percentage of viewership.

However, for a racetrack like Iowa, which has never hosted a Cup Series race until last week, attracting as many as 40,000 spectators is indeed a big deal. Track president Eric Peterson said that the short-track oval in Newton brought between 35,000 and 45,000 people each day over the past weekend.

Brett Griffin was amazed to see a full house at Iowa Speedway. In the latest episode of 'Door Bumper Clear', the motorsport enthusiast said,

"One of the things that amazes me just about NASCAR, in general, is we can build racetracks in the absolute middle of nowhere and have tens and thousands of people come out. I don't care if we're talking about Pocono, if we're talking about Watkins Glen, if we're talking about Michigan, if we're talking about Iowa."

"Holy cow! Man, our fans are just unbelievable in the sense of literally, if you build it they will come. It was cool to see a packed house yesterday," he added.

However, the effect that NASCAR had upon Iowa Speedway was not limited to just the racetrack.

Town businesses benefitted from NASCAR visiting Iowa

The triple-header weekend had a substantial economic impact on the city of Newton, as well as Jasper County, said The Greater Newton Area Chamber of Commerce. Besides selling out every single ticket each day, Iowa found its restaurants extremely busy and hotels packed.

"Restaurants were frequented, hotels were full, campgrounds were full," executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, Kaylea Marchant said. "At the end of the race Saturday night, there was all kinds of race fans up here and you knew it because they still had their race gear on."

Surprisingly, it wasn't just the people of Iowa that showed up for the race. Reflecting on the same, Eric Peterson said in a statement,

"We had fans from all 50 states, even some other countries that made an appearance, but I will say that a majority of fans are coming from either from Iowa or around Iowa."

Coming up next at Iowa Speedway is the HyVee IndyCar race weekend from July 12 to July 14. Marchant feels that the IndyCar event will also attract a good number of fans, as she revealed to weareiowa.com.