NASCAR Staged racing here to stay
Most notably, Brad Keselowski employed an unorthodox strategy during the Toyota/Save Mart 350 and finished third. The stages, combined with the unpredictable timing of cautions, continually shuffled the lineup and generated constant action.
NASCAR vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell made his weekly appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio to praise the format and open the door for minor tweaks moving forward.
"It's definitely here to stay," O'Donnell said. "We’ll sit down with the same group that kind of came up with that concept. We really liked what we’ve seen, and the industry does as well, the strategy that is playing out.
"The things that will be on the table, do you add one (stage), do you look at the different stages in terms of lengths, the number of caution laps, maybe starting the second stage from lap 1 instead of kind of eight laps in versus caution laps counting or maybe take those off the back end. A lot of those things will be on the table for us but (we) continue to be real enthusiastic how those are playing out."