NASCAR Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway sees significant ratings increase in 2024

The 2024 Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway was a big success for NASCAR in terms of television ratings. Fox Sports released viewership numbers on Tuesday and revealed that the race had 2,459,000 viewers, a 14 percent increase from last year.

🚨 @NASCARonFOX drives double-digit viewership increase in the Gateway to the West! 📈

Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race from St. Louis delivered 2,459,000 viewers on FS1, up +14% over last year pic.twitter.com/gNPNRyAqsY

— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) June 4, 2024

Fox Sports also announced that the viewership peaked at 2,877,000 viewers from 6:15 – 6:30 p.m. ET. It was the top cable telecast on Sunday, and the top markets were Charlotte (4.9), Greensboro (3.6), Raleigh (2.4), Norfolk (2.2) and Memphis (2.2).

The Enjoy Illinois 300 featured an exciting ending with Austin Cindric earning the win. It’s the first victory for the 25-year-old since claiming first place in the 2022 Daytona 500. After the race, Cindric talked about what the win at Gateway does for him and Team Penske going forward.

“It’s everything. It’s absolutely everything,” he said. “The funniest thing about it is, this Freightliner Ford Mustang is one of the best-looking cars on the racetrack. I have had terrible races every single time with this car. Great to win with a great paint scheme. Great to win in front of this amazing crowd. Glad to bring it home for these guys, they deserve it.”

Austin Cindric talks more about winning NASCAR Gateway race

During Cindric’s post-race press conference, he was asked what’s motivating him right now since the pressure was on him to win. “I think there’s two avenues I could take on that. I’ll take you down both of them,” he said.

“One of which is I’m an internally motivated person. This is not fun if I’m not winning. As you can imagine, it’s not been very fun for a little while. That’s the standard I hold. I don’t want to find myself in a position to be okay with 10th and be okay. Hey, I finished in the top 10, that’s an awesome day. No, that’s 10th. That’s good, that’s a step forward, but it’s not where I want to be. It’s not the level in which I prepare. It’s not the level in which my team expects to perform. To dovetail into the next avenue, that’s not good enough to race and drive at Team Penske.”

Cindric continued: “No one has to tell me that. There’s no meeting that has to be set in place. I take that very personally. The opportunity that I have to be able to go win at the highest level, the intensity that I carry every day when I wake up, go to the race shop. I cut out every other distraction in my life good, bad or indifferent. If that makes me a horribly rounded person, which it does in a lot of ways, all I care about is what I do between the walls of a racetrack.”