NASCAR reversed course Tuesday and announced the return of stage-break cautions at all road courses, beginning immediately at the upcoming Charlotte Roval race next month. In January, officials announced a move to keep the stages (which divide races into three parts and award points throughout the event) while eliminating the yellow flags that pause the race.
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But that rule didn’t make it through the year without being changed after some recent road races had longer green-flag runs than hoped.
Below, The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi react to the news.
In one word, describe your reaction to hearing stage breaks will return at road courses. And then explain why you feel that way.
Gluck: Defeated. After years of hoping NASCAR would make a move to eliminate stage breaks at road courses, the offseason decision felt like major progress. Fans greeted the news with “Finally!”-type reactions, there was excitement among the driving corps, and it generally seemed like a huge positive. But when recent races lacked the action NASCAR apparently so craves, officials felt like they wanted to make a change. Was the lack of drama because of no stage breaks? I’d argue no; it’s because of a Next Gen car that was designed to race like a sports car — and does. Stage breaks aren’t going to magically fix that problem. Sadly, a decision like this means there’s no going back for a long time now. Stage breaks are not only here to stay on road courses for the foreseeable future, but anyone hoping for an expansion on keeping the race green at places like superspeedways are in for a big disappointment.
Jordan: Predictable. With how Sonoma, Indianapolis and Watkins Glen have unfolded this season — particularly the latter two — it felt inevitable that NASCAR would change its mind on doing away with stage breaks on road courses. The lack of chaos and cautions at these races was noticeable, and there is now a greater possibility to generate what NASCAR must feel its fans and television partner(s) seek. That doesn’t, however, mean this is the right decision. Especially now (see below). Stage breaks effectively “juice” the action, and in a time when the car isn’t producing the kind of racing desired on road courses, this is a lever that eventually was going to be pulled in search of a solution.
How will the immediate return of stage breaks affect the playoff race at the Roval?
Gluck: Sure, there will be two more guaranteed restarts now, but is that going to make the racing more compelling? Last year’s Roval race, which had stage breaks, was one of the worst races of the season (it received 19.2 percent in my “Was it a good race?” poll). Generating a better race is going to need a major adjustment (a different style of Next Gen car for road courses, moving from the Roval back to the Charlotte oval, etc.) whereas this feels like a flimsy Band-Aid that doesn’t address the root of what NASCAR considers a problem.
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Jordan: As the saying goes, “cautions create cautions,” so the likelihood is there will be additional cautions at the Roval. The byproduct is that driver(s) in the playoffs could be involved, thereby adding additional drama/storylines to the Round 2 elimination race.
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Why make this move now instead of waiting until the offseason?
Gluck: Fear over having a boring few hours of an elimination race during the playoffs on NBC while going head-to-head against the NFL. You can imagine the internal meetings: We can’t have another Watkins Glen or Indianapolis where nothing happens. We have to do something! But if that was the case and NASCAR wanted to make a mid-playoffs rule change, I’d have rather seen them somehow figure out a way to run the Charlotte oval instead of a road course. Now that would get people watching, based on what we’ve seen from intermediate tracks in the Next Gen era. Instead, this feels like the first bad competition-related decision NASCAR has made in a while after being on a great streak in recent years.
Bianchi: NASCAR explained this morning on SiriusXM that it wanted all playoff races to operate under the same procedures. Logical reasoning, no doubt. But, here is where the confusion comes in: Why did they implement this change going into the season knowing that one playoff race would operate under different rules? Looking at it from this perspective, it’s hard to think that this was about having the same procedures for all 10 playoff races but rather a reaction to the type of racing that unfolded at Sonoma, Indianapolis and Watkins Glen.
The other part of the Tuesday announcement was the restart zone will be moved back, as was the case for Chicago and Indianapolis. Is this a good move?
Gluck: Here’s where it gets a bit confusing for me. I like the move of trying to avoid clown-show restarts into a sharp Turn 1 like what happened at Circuit of the Americas earlier this year. Moving the restart zone has seemed to reduce the craziness. But on the other hand, isn’t the chaos exactly what NASCAR is going for with the return of stage breaks? If NASCAR is trying to juice the entertainment value of the road-course races, might as well go all in with the normal restart zone there, too.
This dilemma continues to be such a strange part of the playoff format; on the one hand, you’d think NASCAR would want to celebrate the best of the best going head to head, straight up, to decide the champion. On the other hand, Martin Truex Jr. randomly pops a tire at Kansas and NASCAR posts his dismayed quote about the situation (“No matter how good you are or what you do right, something like that can happen”) with a caption of their own that says, “For these 10 weeks, anything can happen.” From this view, having too much randomness introduced into a playoff format isn’t a good thing. Do you want your top drivers and teams competing for a championship everyone takes seriously or do you just want to celebrate the entertainment value and wackiness of the playoff format?
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Bianchi: No one wants to see a replay of what transpired at Indianapolis last year and at Circuit of the Americas in the spring, so shifting the restart zone has helped reduce the wild, wild west nature that was restarts on road courses. On the pendulum of entertainment and unpredictability vs. fair competition, the balance had swung too far in one direction. This change helps even things out.
(Photo from last month’s Watkins Glen race: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
