The Daytona 500 is one of the biggest motorsports events in the world but the way NASCAR has been treating it for two seasons running has left fans disappointed. The stock car racing organization recently announced its race weekend schedules for every race of the season. The focus of a lot of debate online has fallen on The Great American Race for all the wrong reasons.

Last year, the Daytona 500 was the subject of a lot of debate as well and nothing has changed since. Fans and insiders have voiced their disapproval of how NASCAR has planned out the event over five days. From the looks of it, drivers and teams will suffer the most from the schedule, just like they did last season.

NASCAR makes the same mistake with Daytona 500 schedule as last year

In 2024, the build-up to the Daytona 500 will start from Wednesday. Normally, motorsports competitions across the world share sort of a similar format. The week starts with practice sessions where teams can fine-tune their cars to the best of their abilities. This is followed by the qualifying session and finally, the main feature race.

Things will be completely different at the Daytona International Speedway in February. When it comes to the 500, the very first session that the drivers will have to take part in is qualifying. Every single motorsports fan in the world knows how important qualifying is.

The fact that not even a few minutes of testing will be given to the teams and drivers ahead of such an important session is a matter of contention. Bear in mind that the Daytona 500 is arguably the biggest race in NASCAR today. Following qualifying, drivers will have to take part in the Thursday night duels. All of this without a minute of practice.

Friday and Saturday are the days when drivers will be able to take part in the practice sessions before the big race on Sunday. Yes, one may suggest that a two-day practice session right before the race will benefit the teams but it would just be a lot less hectic for the drivers and the teams if the practice sessions were held before the qualifying and duels.

Last season, several cars faced issues during the qualifying session and the duels. It seems like teams will have to brace for something similar this time around as well. Fans had a lot of questions about the schedule, considering how it was not at all popular last season either. Thankfully, veteran journalist Bob Pockrass was there to help out a lot of people.

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One of the biggest questions fans had was why NASCAR went ahead with such a schedule for one of the most-viewed races of the year. Speaking about what the reason for this could be, Bob Pockrass explained the organizers’ point of view but even he did not seem very convinced by it.

“There is practice Fri/Sat. At least part of thought process is w/impound on superspeedway (which duel races are), that cars are set up for race conditions and teams likely wouldn’t do much drafting to avoid wrecking a car. Not saying I agree but that is at least some of reason,” he tweeted.

The fact that there was going to be no practice session ahead of the duels stumped a lot of fans as well. Yes, they are not the actual Daytona 500 but they are still 150-mile races that determine the drivers’ starting positions (apart from the top two in qualifying).

When asked if there wasn’t going to be any sort of practice ahead of the duels, Pockrass tweeted, “Correct … same as last year – no practice prior to the duels (tech on Wednesday, then single-car qualifying that night and impound for duels on Thursday). Then practice Friday and Saturday with tech Sunday morning for the Daytona 500.”

It seems like this edition of the Daytona 500 has met with a lot of criticism over its schedule. Drivers and teams will have a tough time in qualifying and the duels. There might be a lot of chaos on track as cars may go out with a lot of issues that would have come out in practice. But there isn’t much anyone can be done about it at this point.

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