Does NASCAR Overtime Rule Need an Overhaul?

The 2024 NASCAR season has seen its fair share of chaos, and the opening round of the playoffs was no exception.

While road courses have come to comprise a significant part of the schedule, they were consuming the lion’s share of racecars this weekend, with overtime causing the middle series to wear out its welcome after multiple attempts at a green-white-checkered finish and a red flag to boot. While fans deserve a good finish, teams deserve to be able to fit the car back in the hauler afterwards. After this weekend’s marathons, is it time NASCAR revisits how overtime is officiated?

Like the white flag lap at The Glen last Sunday, we’re going three-wide this week with Tom Blackburn, Vito Pugliese and Stephen Stumpf in 2-Headed Monster.

Overtime Has Run Its Course

It’s time for NASCAR to get rid of the overtime rule. In an era when the sanctioning body has recently penalized a driver like Austin Dillon for forcibly altering results of a race finish by wrecking others, perhaps it’s time for self-reflection. The necessity to create an artificial green-flag sprint to the finish has finally worn out its usefulness. 

Finishing under yellow isn’t a great result, that’s true, but it’s honestly a better alternative to what has been unfolding over the last few years, as cars are used as snow plows to gain positions. Storylines are beginning to center around who survives the wreckfests at the end, instead of who had the dominant car or who figured out the setup that gets a victory. It’s become almost pointless to watch the first 98 percent of a race, knowing that the last two will be drivers getting eager and mayhem breaking loose. This is especially true at every restrictor plate event. 

Furthermore, fans are told repeatedly that motorsports, and stock car racing in general, is getting more expensive. Drivers have to bring budgets in every year to offset the lack of full-season sponsorship, thus limiting the ability of talent to rise over a peer that has more cash. Rather than restrict track time by shortening practices, which has robbed the paying customer in the stands, how about eliminating the artificial environment that brews wrecks that overwhelm the last hour of the race? That might save more money than cutting 90 minutes of practice. 

I come from the open-wheel world, where there are no overtime rules. IndyCar race control has the option to abandon procedures, as they say, to throw a red flag if the…