The length of stage cautions in NASCAR has come into focus this week following this past Sunday’s Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway. Denny Hamlin got the conversation started on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast, calling on NASCAR to find a way to shorten the length of stage cautions. Dale Earnhardt Jr. also chimed in, adding that too often, the stage caution laps eat up too much of the next stage.
There have been calls for NASCAR to stop counting laps on the stage breaks. Jeff Gluck of The Athletic argued against that idea on Thursday.
“I don’t want them to stop counting laps on the stage breaks. I think those laps need to count. If you stop counting the laps, and you’re just running, you’re extending the actual distance of the race by some unknown amount of laps,” Gluck said on the Gluckcast. “Stage breaks have already hurt the purity aspect of it. I don’t want them to go, ‘It’s the 500, but we had about X amount of laps that we didn’t count.’ It’s still the race, it’s still going on.
“I’d be fine not stopping for stage breaks, I was on that for the road courses. They didn’t even make it through the whole season doing that because they felt it made it too boring, and I also understand it’s not reasonable for TV because they’re paying the bills. They have to get their commercials in.”
NASCAR insider offers fix to stage caution length issue
Gluck does have a potential solution. His idea is to make Stage 2 longer.
“If we’re going to compromise, my solution would be when it comes into eating into the next stage, just make Stage 2 longer,” Gluck said. “That is what I think should happen because in a lot of cases, Stage 1 and Stage are about the same length, and then Stage 3 is the longer stage.
“Just make Stage 2 longer to account for the stage break, and then it won’t be as big of a deal to lose laps off that stage because I agree it’s weird when Stage 2 is already 10, 15, 20 percent over by the time it even gets started. I just think, personally, if you stop counting the laps in the middle of a Cup race, it’s getting into some murky territory.”
Stage caution length is an issue, for sure, one that is on NASCAR’s radar. Cup Series managing director Brad Moran admitted Wednesday that the length of stage cautions were too long at Martinsville. Moran said the sanctioning body is “aware” of the outcry from both drivers and fans, and they’re working on giving everyone “as much green flag racing as possible.”
“We certainly didn’t like how long it took us at Martinsville. We’re aware of it, for sure, and we’ll work with our broadcast partners to try to minimize it the best we can,” Moran told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We may look at different procedures down the road but again, it’s all about trying to give the fans as much green flag racing as possible. Martinsville didn’t work out very well for us the way these cautions fell and obviously, being on the smallest track we go to, it magnifies it.”
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