"People's consuming habits change": Danica Patrick compares NASCAR to F1 and shares what she’d change about the sport

Former NASCAR Cup Series and NTT IndyCar Series driver-turned-businesswoman and broadcaster, Danica Patrick has always kept in touch with motorsports. Often seen upholding broadcasting duties for Sky Sports covering F1, as well as making appearances in the booth for FOX Sports during the Cup Series season, Patrick still knows a thing or two about racing.

Despite having driven a racing car all the way back during the 2018 Daytona 500, Patrick's involvement with NASCAR and F1 gives her a unique ability to compare the two sports. With the open-wheeled series all the more popular with fans in the United States of America due to a plethora of reasons, NASCAR has been on a slow and continued decline since the early to late 2000s.

Elaborating on what Danica Patrick might change for the sport to garner more interest from the fans, the 41-year-old told awfulannouncing.com:

"I sat down actually with one really important person within NASCAR, one of the things I said was, ‘The races are way, way too long.' People’s consuming habits change because people can’t keep their attention span long enough.

"So when you’re asking them to sit in front of a television for five or six hours, with pre-race and the race and everything, that’s a lot of time to expect someone to be attentive."

Danica Patrick might be on to something here as the norm for the average NASCAR Cup Series race in terms of distance ranges from 400-600 miles. With marquee events such as the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600 remaining the same, the sport could maybe do with shorter races, especially given how many restarts one saw at this year's race at the Circuit of the Americas.

Kevin Harvick seems to be of the same thought as Danica Patrick on the length of NASCAR races

Stewart-Haas Racing driver Kevin Harvick also spoke on similar lines to Danica Patrick in an interview earlier this year. Speaking to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio host and producer Davey Segal, Harvick said:

"They shouldn't even allow them to have 500-mile races, they to me seem like a thing of the past."

Meanwhile, all three nationwide series of the sport get ready to crown a champion for the 2023 season with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday dominated by races. The Truck Series race is set to go live on Friday, November 3, 2023, at 10:00 pm ET.