There has been a recent trend among NASCAR drivers to run at much less than full throttle in order to save fuel. The result is a slow moving freight train of cars with no passing…and even less excitement for the fans.
After complaints from the fans, NASCAR is taking action and will be making some major adjustments to the stage lengths for the race at Talladega at the end of this month.
Normally, the first two stages are a bit shorter with stage three lasting as much as half of the race length to ensure at least one fuel stop during the stage.
Last year the stages at Talladega were 60-60-68 laps for the total of 188 laps around the 2.66 mile track.
While NASCAR has not released the official stage lengths for the race, they are hinting that stage one will be much longer – maybe as many as 100 laps – while stages two and three will be much shorter – short enough that a fuel stop will not be required.
On the NASCAR podcast “Hauler Talk”, executive vice president and chief racing development officer of NASCAR, John Probst said, “listen, we talk to our fans every week. So we hear what they’re saying. There’s certainly a lot of feedback from the fans that don’t always like to see some of the three-wide fuel saving that happens mostly at Talladega and Daytona.”
Probst added, “generally, how a lot of our superspeedways were laid out, it was a short stage, a short stage and then a long stage to the end,” Probst said. “Going into Talladega, we’re going to flip that.”
NASCAR…and fans…are hoping the change will bring back more aggressive racing and an emphasis on track position and not “riding” the ring around the track.
“It could be interesting in that first stage, if there’s some teams that try to do it on one stop versus some that try to do it on two,” Probst said. “We think that if there are some that do it on two, they may drag the group that would try to do it in one stop. So it’s got some potential for some pretty interesting strategies.”
In other changes, NASCAR is looking to revive “Preseason Thunder” at Daytona next January where officials can further evaluate the “fuel-saving” issue.
Probst noted, “I think that coming out of Daytona, we have been working hand-in-hand with a lot of our race teams, trying to largely break into two categories of things that we could do. One are the sporting related things, like rules around pit stops or stage lengths or things of that nature. The other being in a technical bucket, which would mean car changes, spoiler, power levels and things of that nature.”
He added, “I think it’s important to point out that this is a tool now that the teams know. And this is not something that I think is ever going to go away because these guys will look for every possible advantage that they can get. And that’s reasonable on their end. So I think that what we can do is just take steps to mitigate that.”