(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
It sure has been a newsy day, hasn’t it?
NASCAR unveiled a trio of notable details for the remainder of the 2020 season on Thursday – bringing the choose rule into full-time implementation, altering the format for setting starting lineups in the COVID-19 era and revealing the tracks that will make up the final stretch of the year.
It was a lot of news to digest, so I’ve done my best to do the hard work for you. Here’s my take on each announcement.
Choose Rule
NASCAR has given its drivers a chance to make a choice for their restart positioning in future races. In doing so the sanctioning body has made a tremendous choice itself.
Just over three weeks after testing the choose rule utilized at various short tracks across the United States, NASCAR announced a decision to implement the rule in all three of its national series starting with this weekend’s races at Michigan International Speedway.
The concept behind the rule is simple – prior to each restart, drivers will be gridded single file by position and have an option to choose which lane they’ll restart in, giving them the chance to make moves for track position or lane choice.
First three drivers all choose the outside lane because it’s massively preferred at a track? Perfect. The fourth can choose the inside and restart in second alongside the leader.
In implementing the rule, the tour has added fairness to a system that led to awkward gamesmanship and occasionally ruined competitors’ races based solely on the lane they were forced to restart in.
Gone will be the moments where drivers awkwardly brake check each other in pit road, hoping desperately to get an odd or even position so they can restart in the preferred lane. Pit stop efficiency will grow slightly more important, with teams eager to leave pit road as soon as possible to get the earliest lane choice.
A slow stop won’t necessarily be damning for competitors, either. How many times has someone been trapped on the inside lane at an outside-preferred track, dropped to third and then seen their run damaged even further by a second caution and another restart with them trapped even further back on the inside lane?
Think of all the times a faster car has lost out to another competitor due to the lane they restarted in, or the instances where cars have been damaged by the silly games on pit road – their races impacted by a crash at 40 mph instead of one on-track at 150 mph or more.
Most of those moments will be gone with the choose rule’s implementation, and when they do happen it’ll largely be by choice from the competitor. That’s a great thing
Don’t just take my word for it, though. Hear from the competitors.
“Finally,” Joey Logano said on Thursday. “I’ve been looking for this for years.”
“I think the choose rule’s been needed for a long time,” Chase Elliott said after his All-Star Race win in July. “I think it should be that way every week. I don’t think there’s really a reason to not have it.
“There’s no reason to me why you shouldn’t have the choice or you should be automatically told where you’re going to line up when one lane has an obvious advantage, just based on where you come off pit road.”
Elliott followed the above quote at the time by saying “life ain’t fair, I guess.” And to an extent that may still ring true, especially with the chaos and unpredictability of modern NASCAR restarts. But Thursday’s announcement makes the business of restarts a little bit more fair for all involved.
The rule also won’t be utilized at road courses and super speedways, though you’d think it wouldn’t hinder those races much if at all. Seeing teams making lane choices to pick preferred drafting partners would be an interesting dynamic to add to superspeedways.
There’s a genuine question in asking why a change like this would be implemented just before the playoffs, and there’s also concern that it could get a bit murky at times – particularly if teams argue over position prior to the restart as they have as recently as this summer.
But if the competitors are in favor of it and it shows no real ability to hinder the restarts fans have grown to love, then implementing the choose rule is worthwhile and possibly the best addition to the race format NASCAR has made this year.
Qualifying
Get out your calculator, abacus, Amazon Echo and math textbook. Then you might be able to figure out the new “qualifying” format NASCAR intends to use after this weekend’s races.
Okay. It isn’t that complicated. But it’s going to require the sanctioning body and media partners to do a lot of the leg work to explain the grid each week, because casual fans watching at home might struggle to follow along.
Shoot – I might struggle a bit, too.
NASCAR is adopting something akin to the old BCS football ranking system and using it to set the field for future races. Points position (35%), results from the previous race (50%) and the fastest lap from the prior event (15%) will each factor into the lineups, with the field gridded up based on their weighted averages.
When the postseason arrives, playoff drivers will be given priority. The Round of 16 will see the top 16 positions awarded to playoff drivers. It’ll top to 12 for the Round of 12, eight for the semifinal round and, lastly, four for the Championship 4.
This move is well-intentioned and ultimately fair just like the choose rule. It came after complaints from drivers trapped in unfortuitous positions with the current format, which organizes the field into groups of 12 and then grids them based on a random draw.
But it could do with being a bit less confusing. Fans are already tasked with keeping track of race victories, stage wins and playoff points throughout the year – a challenging enough feat that I’ve dedicated a weekly piece to it for all three national tours.
Adding additional math to the equation risks turning what’s meant to be a casual experience for onlookers into the sports equivalent of a college calculus class.
With one day shows the current trend amid the COVID-19 pandemic, outlawing qualifying is totally understandable. We’ve already seen qualifying bite someone in the NTT IndyCar Series, when Takuma Sato had to miss the season-opening race at Texas Motor Speedway after a three-month hiatus because he crashed before the race with too little time for his team to complete repairs.
A change in the format was necessary with the playoffs coming up, and allowing the postseason contenders to start up front when that moment comes is understandable and actually should make it easier for 2020 NASCAR converts to keep track of them all.
But one would think that there has to be an easier way to set the field – an invert of the previous race or setting the field based off of owners points, for example.
This result is fair for the teams and that is what’s most important with a championship soon to be on the line. But I’m not looking forward to the confusion it might cause.
Schedule Shakeup
Good news playoff fans… For now, at least. The Cup Series playoff schedule hasn’t changed from it’s originally-announced plans.
Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval are still in the same round, primed to yield angry drivers and stressed out fanbases with the inevitable twists and turns they provide. Texas Motor Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway didn’t need to change dates after Electric Daisy Carnival was canceled. Phoenix Raceway is still planned to close out the year – sorry, Homestead-Miami Speedway lovers.
These announced dates are all still fluid, of course. Try as they might, NASCAR can’t completely predict what shifts the COVID-19 pandemic may bring entering the fall months. The finale in Arizona is the most concerning, and it’s decently likely that the championships will be awarded without fans in the stands.
But overall NASCAR’s done well with these plans and made good on their playoff promises to facilities that were surely eager to see if they kept their postseason dates.
What was most intriguing about Thursday’s schedule announcement were plans for the Xfinity and Truck tours.
The Xfinity Series will now have a true playoff wildcard, running at Talladega alongside the traditional Truck and Cup races. The series will open with the same vicious Round of 12 as Cup, starting at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before rolling through Talladega and the Charlotte Roval.
Truck Series competitors will have a fairly standard playoff run, save for the addition of a third race at Kansas Speedway on Oct. 16 at the expense of the planned summer swing to Eldora Speedway.
It’s a regular season race that’s most intriguing for NASCAR’s third tour. Truck competitors will get to run at Darlington Raceway for the first time since 2011, joining the throwback weekend festivities on Sept. 6.
That it comes at the expense of the annual thriller at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park hurts. But should teams play along and outfit their trucks with schemes that pay homage to the stars and teams of yesteryear, the race has potential to add to the feel-good nostalgia of a weekend that’s become a highlight of the annual NASCAR calendar.
Thursday’s schedule announcement weren’t shocking. Most plans tied to the final stretch were rumored or already known.
What’s most pleasant about the release is seeing a light at the end of the dark, steep tunnel that’s been the summer of 2020 or the NASCAR industry. The field isn’t in the clear just yet, but they look more likely to make it to the planned end of the season with each passing week.
