Historic Finishes Pushing NASCAR Mainstream

The Cup race on 5/5 at Kansas Speedway will go down in the record books for the closest finish in NASCAR history and the driver that will go with it is Kyle Larson. Larson stole the win from Chris Buescher by a margin of 0.001 seconds, which tops the 0.002 record set by Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch at Darlington in 2003. 

The finish is already starting to be posted by mainstream sports accounts like Bleacher Report and Barstool Sports. Between the tweets from these two accounts as well as NASCAR's own post, the finish is already at over a million views just one hour after the fact. 

These finishes are propelling NASCAR to mainstream audiences and creating the craziest season of all time. Just two months ago we were all talking about the insane three-wide photo finish at Atlanta that skyrocketed on social media and made it onto ESPN's top 10 plays. This is exactly what the sport needs for this new era and will only lead to more growth in the fanbase.

As for the driver that won the race, he's cementing himself as one of NASCAR's top superstars. Larson is a name that a lot of people can recognize, although it may be for his infamous suspension, and that recognition being connected to moments like this creates household names. Very soon we may be talking about Kyle Larson like we did for guys like Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson who coincidentally drove for the same team. 

Capitalizing on this moment will be huge for NASCAR and it's mission to drive back up the ratings. Currently the season is at a 6% increase in viewership over last season and that'll probably grow with Darlington next week after this finish. However, if they fail to push this to a wider audience for the entire week, it will be a massive miss for them.