The 2024 Daytona 500 was one of the strangest races in recent memory because of all the fuel-saving. Erik Jones took to Twitter to express his frustration, saying that it hurt the racing product, and Bubba Wallace agreed. What went into this, and can NASCAR fix the problem?
The drivers were on the radio during the early portion of the race when fuel saving was very prevalent, and they were not particularly happy, particularly with how slow they were going. Martin Truex Jr. said, “It feels like we’re crawling”, and Denny Hamlin said, “How slow can she go?”. Chase Elliott made a humorous comment blaming crew chief Alan Gustafson for the fuel saving.
Even Erik Jones’ comment we showed above explains a bit why the drivers do not like fuel saving. He said, “I wish we could race more throughout the day.”
The only way for drivers to save fuel is to go slower. They have to stay off of the throttle so that the engine does not use as much fuel by turning more RPM.
When drivers have to save fuel, they cannot be as aggressive as they probably want to. They have to go slower, and they have to try to save fuel instead of racing as hard as they can throughout the race.
This all comes down to the strategy of stage racing and superspeedways. Crew chiefs know that drivers need to make at least one pit stop during each stage, and staying on pit road for as little time as possible is vital. Look at the finish to stage one, where Chevrolets were able to stay on pit road for a much shorter time and gap the rest of the field.
The best way to shorten the amount of time on pit road is to do two things. One, pit as late as possible in the stage, therefore the car does not need to take as much fuel to get to the end of the stage. Second, cars can save fuel, which means that they can go as long into the stage as possible, which, in turn, means the car has to take that much less fuel.
If a driver has to spend even one extra second on pit road because of filling up the fuel, that could cause them to lose the draft because they come out further behind those they pitted with. It’s frustrating for drivers, but, it’s a product of the current strategy on superspeedways.
As Erik Jones said, there is no easy fix to this. Maybe NASCAR could eliminate stage cautions to force the drivers to strategize for lap 200 instead of lap 65 and splitting stages, but, NASCAR tried getting rid of stage cautions at road courses in 2023 and quickly reverted that decision.
However, does NASCAR really need to make a change? It is quite annoying for the drivers, but, for the fans, it’s not always a bad thing.
Fuel strategy adds an extra element to the race. Instead of just worrying about the race at hand, the focus turns to who saves enough fuel, and who could outsmart the other driver or race team. The race becomes about strategy while also having some superspeedway excitement as well.
Again, look at the finish of stage one. There was still aggressive racing to the end, and the fuel strategy worked out well for the Hendrick cars.
The drivers did not like the superspeedway racing on Monday at Daytona, but, can it be fixed? The better question may be, should it be fixed?
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