However, Newgarden was not crowned as the winner of the 2025 championship. That honor instead went to Alex Palou<\/a>, who clinched this year\u2019s title two races ago. With eight wins on the season, Palou and Chip Ganassi Racing claimed yet another title in the sport they\u2019ve become so dominant in.<\/p>\n At this point, you might be wondering what the hell I\u2019m going on about IndyCar for in a NASCAR column, and you\u2019d be fair for questioning that. However, the biggest story from IndyCar\u2019s penultimate race wasn\u2019t the winner, or the fact that Palou put on a show of pure dominance in 2025. <\/p>\n No, the big story here is the moneymaker: the ratings.<\/p>\n This season, according to Nielsen Media Research<\/a>, was the most watched in nearly 20 years. And the Music City GP, which, as a reminder, was for essentially nothing but the prize money considering Palou had already clinched the title, netted over 1.4 million viewers, which is a 136% increase over 2024.<\/p>\n In a year when the championship wasn\u2019t even remotely close, FOX and IndyCar planted the sport in living rooms in a manner which hasn\u2019t been seen in nearly two decades. (Disclaimer: Frontstretch\u2019s editor-in-chief was an employee of FOX\u2019s IndyCar broadcasts in 2025.) The growth that the series saw in this season is exponential, and it\u2019s not because of late-season gimmicks or a winner-take-all race. It\u2019s because of the groundwork done to grow the series in both advertisement and marketing.<\/p>\n It was a masterclass and will more than likely be studied soon at the university level. But what does this mean for NASCAR? That it\u2019s fishing in the wrong barrel. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying we should go back to the old way of pointing your way to a championship. I\u2019ve been more than vocal on this very site that that isn\u2019t the solution. However, NASCAR keeps trying to engage younger demographics with high-drama, high-stakes single races, which many would argue is to the detriment of the sport.<\/p>\n As IndyCar proved this year by showcasing an 81% gain in ages 18-34 and a 51% jump in 18-49, you don\u2019t need a winner-take-all showdown to draw people to a product, you just have to know how to market it. <\/p>\n You won\u2019t hear me say this much, but the open-wheel market in the U.S. got a win over NASCAR this year in a big way, and depending on how certain court battles shake out, another one could be coming. <\/p>\n Take notes, NASCAR. It can be done.<\/p>\n The Will Power-Ful IndyCar Moment \u2014 One NASCAR 2025 Is Missing<\/p>\n Is Joey Logano right that other drivers haven\u2019t performed under the bright lights?<\/p>\n Look, when you\u2019re a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, you get to talk your talk quite a bit. And when Joey Logano<\/a> was asked this week about the legitimacy of his championships in the current playoff format, he gave a soundbite that a three-time champion should give.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you scored a bunch of points during a regular season and you didn\u2019t make the Championship 4, shame on you,\u201d Logano said. \u201cYou had a head start, and you still couldn\u2019t do it. \u2026 Don\u2019t say it\u2019s not legit. You could have gone out there and won to get in. You didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Mic drop, then. But cue the \u201che\u2019s right, you know\u201d Morgan Freeman meme, because Logano hit the nail on the head. <\/p>\n For a few years now, Team Penske in particular has shown itself to be master of this playoff format, whether you agree with it or not. Ryan Blaney<\/a> turned it on when he needed to most in his championship season, too.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t understand the argument against Logano\u2019s championships, either. That\u2019s like saying any Super Bowl that\u2019s ever been won that wasn\u2019t against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots is somehow worth less, just because you were playing different teams. You still had to get there, and you still had to win when you did. Logano did just that on more than one occasion now, so he has every right to call it like he sees it here.<\/p>\n Who gives Joe Gibbs Racing the best title shot: Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell or Chase Briscoe?<\/p>\n For a large portion of 2025, Denny Hamlin<\/a> has been considered by far and away JGR\u2019s best shot at a Cup championship this season, and who could blame anyone for thinking that to be true? In a year when there\u2019s been more extracurricular activity for Hamlin than ever before, he\u2019s been on the top of his game, and that deserves some praise.<\/p>\n However, his teammates haven\u2019t exactly been slow. Chase Briscoe<\/a> obviously picked up an impressive win at Darlington Raceway last weekend, and Christopher Bell<\/a> is always bad fast at most of the playoff tracks. After all, he\u2019s had plenty of Championship 4 experience over the past few seasons.<\/p>\n So if you\u2019re Joe Gibbs, who is your money on? That might be the question of the year. While Penske has shown a mastery of this playoff format, the cars haven\u2019t been as good this year as in previous ones. In that same breath, Hendrick Motorsports is still undergoing one of the wackiest years I can recall for the team, and I don\u2019t think anyone who\u2019s watched its luck play out this year feels like it\u2019s a real contender. So who is?<\/p>\n That leaves the three JGR cars of Hamlin, Bell and Briscoe, one of which has already picked up their first win of the playoffs. If you wanted to play the math game right now, Briscoe is the team\u2019s best chance at taking home the big one, but somehow, deep in my gut and my psyche that loves a storybook ending, I want to pick Hamlin.<\/p>\n Despite all of the outside noise and potential headlines coming his way, Hamlin finally gets it done in 2025. The veteran has a few tricks up his sleeve, whether fans (or NASCAR, for that matter) want him to or not.<\/p>\n Before Connor Zilisch, Denny Hamlin Was His Own \u2018Parker Kligerman\u2019<\/p>\n Who\u2019s had the more impressive season, Connor Zilisch or Corey Heim?<\/p>\n Webster\u2019s Dictionary defines domination as an \u201cexercise of mastery or ruling power.\u201d If that\u2019s the case, then Connor Zilisch<\/a> and Corey Heim<\/a> have both written the book on the term in their respective series in 2025.<\/p>\n Since returning from an injury he suffered at Talladega Superspeedway, Zilisch has been an unstoppable force, flying through the field and being credited with a win in six of the last seven races of the NASCAR Xfinity Seriesseason. He\u2019s also not finished outside of the top five a single time since making that return, which might be an even more impressive feat than the win totals.<\/p>\n In comparison, Heim has been the immovable object. He qualifies first, runs first, stays first and wins. He also has four wins in the last five races,and could very well set the series record for wins in a season. <\/p>\n So who\u2019s done it better? People are going to dislike my answer here, but it\u2019s Heim.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s not to say that it\u2019s not close, because we\u2019re talking about microscopic differences here. But in a shorter schedule and with arguably closer competition from an equipment standpoint, Heim has been the best in the series from start to finish. In Zilisch\u2019s case, it\u2019s been like his old self was lost after Talladega. That or he either evolved into whatever motorsport robot this version is without telling anyone.<\/p>\n Heim has been the frontrunner for the championship essentially since the green flag dropped on the first race of the season, and since then, has wrote his own chapter in the history books of the series. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying Zilisch hasn\u2019t done the same, but in this specific argument, I\u2019ve got to go with Heim as being the most dominant driver over the entire course of a season.<\/p>\n Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated\u2019s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master’s student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the NTT IndyCar Series\u2019 big ratings bump proof that NASCAR doesn\u2019t need a playoff system? For those…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":201399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-201398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115149865735450055","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"NTT](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/will-power-chevrolet-detroit-grand-prix-by_-paul-hurley_ref-image-without-watermark_m134192-150x100..jpeg\")
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