Stages add edge to tough racing
There were crashes in Sunday’s Daytona 500, hardly a shocker since the season-opening race marked the debut of a new three-stage award system at a track already known for massive wrecks.
Daytona International Speedway offers restrictor-place racing where cars are bunched up and collisions are frequent. Drivers interviewed, usually after they climbed out of their mangled cars, said the addition of the stages — worth up to 11 points each — were a factor in the eight cautions as 15 cars were forced from the field.
“It seemed like you get five laps to go in the stage, everything would kind of amp back up there,” third-place finisher A.J. Allmendinger said. “Three to go, everybody kind of starts getting racing.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth and Jamie McMurray were among the drivers forced out Sunday.
There were no yellow flags, however, over the final 43 laps, making it the first time in at least a decade there wasn’t at least one caution within the final 12 laps of the finish.
“We had a lot of young drivers up front, which was neat to see,” NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell said. “You saw they could hold their own with a lot of aggressive driving as well. It was certainly surprising at the end to see that many green flag laps.”
The lack of cautions, something crew chiefs have come to rely on here, turned it into a gasmileage race as Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson and Paul Menard — all contending for the lead late — ran out of fuel.
The five-minute clock for pit road repairs and the ban on cars returning to the track after a trip to the garage to fix race damage also made their debuts.
“It’s going to be a work in progress as we go (with) NASCAR working with the race teams,” O’Donnell said. “If it goes beyond five minutes, their day is over anyway. If we had a line of teams here saying we have to do something, maybe we’d do something. We didn’t have one of them.”
Kurt Busch, whose No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford was part of a 17-car crash on lap 129, just made it back out on the track before the countdown expired. He ended up winning the race.