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NASCAR, once an American pastime, is running out of gas

On Sunday afternoon, veteran driver and former champion Kevin Harvick stormed to victory in NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway after a late battle with fan favorite Joey Logano. Late drama further back saw the final two playoff spots change hands in a crash-filled slugfest of a race, one of the sport’s feature events.

The drivers did so in front of an estimated 60,000 fans at the racetrack, reversing the tracks recent downward attendance trend. These are impressive numbers, until you compare them with the 250,000 spectators who took in May’s open-wheel Indianapolis 500 in the same bleachers, or the 200,000-plus who attended this exact NASCAR event in the mid-1990’s.