The first primetime Daytona 500 in NASCAR history was a win for Fox — its highest-rated Monday night audience since Game 5 of the 2010 World Series — with 36.5 million viewers, up 22 percent from 30 million last year.
And NASCAR surprisingly continued its momentum from last season, partly because of the freak crash in which Juan Pablo Montoya’s car hit a truck loaded with jet fuel, injuring no one but scorching the track and forcing a two-hour delay.
If there was any doubt NASCAR successfully reached a mainstream audience, sports talk radio personality Jim Rome dispelled it Tuesday afternoon when he said the race was more entertaining than any Monday night NFL game last season.