Dale Earnhardt Jr Unearths the Weirdest & Anticlimactic Aspects of NASCAR’s Dull Sonoma Outing

At the beginning of this year, NASCAR made some changes to its rules. One change that attracted the attention of everyone was the elimination of stage breaks from Road Courses. This alteration sparked discussions among fans and notable figures in the NASCAR community.

Fans had raised concerns about how stage breaks during the race could interrupt the flow of racing and potentially impact team strategies. Elton Sawyer, the Vice President of Competition for NASCAR, addressed these questions by stating, “When we introduced stage racing four or five years ago, we took an element of strategy away from the event [at road courses]. So we felt like this (rule change) is going to bring some new storylines.”

A NASCAR Hall of Famer also weighed in on this new change, sharing his interesting insights during his Dale Jr Download podcast with Mike Davis.

NASCAR’s Bold Move to Eliminate Stage Breaks Ignites Debate and Strategy Shifts

After COTA, Sonoma was the second race without stage cautions. Naturally, NASCAR fans and drivers adapt to their old habits of seeing green and white flags at the Stage ends. On Dale Jr Download, Dale Jr and Mike Davis talked about the effects of the elimination of stage cautions.

When the discussion reached the topic of Sonoma Raceway, Dale shared his experience in adapting to the new NASCAR rules and recounted an incident while watching the race.

He stated, “I’m looking at TV, it’s counting the laps down to the end of the stage. And I’m so programmed of the idea of a yellow getting ready to come out and as that number gets counted down and the stage ends and the caution doesn’t come out and these points go wherever they go and they keep racing.”

Continuing his take, Dale Jr expressed his opinion on how the race becomes more thrilling after the stage restart. He emphasized the excitement generated by drivers battling for the stage win on the last lap.

Dale Jr felt that without a stage break, the race lost some of its appeals and became less engaging. He conveyed this sentiment by stating, “That sort of dull moment in the broadcast where there’s okay we came to the end, there goes the points to everybody and we’re going to keep on racing.”

“It just was a weird deal.”

“I’m not criticizing. I don’t think damn it we got to change it back. I’m not aborting on this change, but it was just a little anticlimactic for the end of the stage.” JR Motorsports owner concluded.

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At Wine Country, Denny Hamlin began the race from the pole position and successfully maintained his lead. However, on Lap 95, he encountered trouble when he clipped the inside wall on Turn 11, causing him to lose control and wreck his car. After the race, he voiced his opinion on the absence of stage breaks during his podcast, ‘Actions Detrimental’.

“The way that we’re doing with no stage points now, it actually lets the race play out more naturally, and so you don’t have this flip-flopping. But the race has a potential to get boring. I mean, it does,” Hamlin said.

“I know that (Kevin) Harvick was the one that really kind of advocated for this, no stage breaks, and I totally get the reason for it. It allows you to determine your own strategy, which, that’s why those guys flipped that caution on.”

“They played a different strategy than we did, and it paid off. I totally get that for sure.”

“But you have a chance with no stage breaks of this thing, just going green, green, green. Had that caution not come for that tire, we could’ve been … well, then you had my wreck, but there was not else much to it,” the 23XI Racing owner concluded.

Having heard many different takes, what are your thoughts on stage breaks? Should we have them at road courses? Let us know in the comments.

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