Motorsport News

COTA Cup Race Ending Was a Catastrophe That Cannot Happen Again

NASCAR Cup Series

1. Should stage cautions be removed everywhere?

Not every driver was ecstatic for the lack of stage cautions at Circuit of the Americas, but the races certainly had a different feel from road courses in the past.

That was especially obvious in the middle of the NASCAR Cup Series race, as the field embarked on a 26-lap green-flag run that involved the entirety of stage two and the opening part of the final stage.

William Byron and Tyler Reddick were the fastest cars of the race, and both drivers found themselves on opposite pit strategy during this time. The field may have gotten spread out, but the viewers were treated to a fun battle where both Reddick and Byron would make pit stops and then try to run the other down. It was a welcome change, and it’s a battle that wouldn’t have happened with stage cautions.

Reddick, who went on to win the race, said that he found a lack of stage cautions more enjoyable.

Another added bonus in the lack of cautions was that the field was not required to run two or three laps at pace car speed; the energy and intensity remained throughout the entire run. At a track where a single caution will account for at least 3% of a race, every green-flag lap counts.

Stages were also added to help TV with commercials, but I did not sense a noticeable difference without the cautions. That would be something for people to keep track of in the five remaining road course races this season.

Was Sunday (March 26) enough to entertain the idea of removing stage cautions at ovals? Perhaps, but there are still five Cup races left in this experiment. But if this race was the first step toward removing stage cautions entirely, it certainly did its job.

2. What’s going on with penalties?

Frustrated after the Cup race at COTA, Daniel Suarez bumped teammate Ross Chastain out of the way on the pit road entry apron and then repeatedly bumped into Alex Bowman on pit road with a NASCAR official not too far away.

Suarez was ultimately fined $50,000 for his actions. The penalty for pit road shenanigans makes sense, as Ty Gibbs was fined $75,000 for running into Ty Dillon on pit road at Texas Motor Speedway last September; Gibbs’ fine was larger due to prior history.

The controversy, however, is that the penalty comes right on the heels of Denny Hamlin’s penalty for intentionally putting Chastain in the wall at Phoenix Raceway.

Hamlin’s…

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