The final day of the Coates Hire Newcastle 500 dominated social media and produced a huge ratings boost for Fox Sports in the absence of The Ashes.

For the second year running, the Sunday of the Newcastle Virgin Australia Supercars Championship event drew the highest number of social media interactions as measured by research agency Nielsen, according to Mediaweek.

Supercars attracted 297,900 interactions on social media on Sunday, as compared to Sunday night’s Australia v India Twenty20 match in second position for sporting fixtures on 151,100.

Saturday’s racing was fifth with 88,600 interactions.

The result is a far more emphatic victory than in 2017, when Supercars’ season-ender pipped the first day of The Ashes cricket test match at The Gabba, which was played on the Thursday immediately prior to the Newcastle 500.

On pay television, Supercars topped Saturday’s ratings with the top 11 programs and 12 of the top 20 (sports telecasts are generally coded into multiple programs), according to TV Tonight.

Sunday’s Fox Sports telecast ran second only to the T20 with 281,000 tuning in to watch the race nationally on pay television, after 201,000 watched Saturday’s thriller.

A handful of segments of the Friday telecast made the top 20, while Saturday’s Super2 race was third for the day.

Sunday’s figures were up more than 100,000 on the corresponding day in 2017, and Saturday’s by around 80,000, most likely due to not running against The Ashes.

Network 10 drew a five-city metro figure of 291,000 for Sunday’s podium, down 7,000 on 2017, and 286,000 for the race itself, putting Supercars 15th and 17th for the day on FTA.

The podium was seventh on Saturday with 262,000 viewers, and Race 30 12th with 218,000.

Regional ratings were not available at time of writing.

Speedcafe.com had a highly successful week with 1.23 million page views, an increase of 23 percent on the corresponding period (Monday to Sunday) of 2017.

Supercars reported a three-day crowd figure of 162,248 people, down almost 30,000 on last year.