NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell makes case for stage breaks, confirms length is ‘high on the radar’

NASCAR introduced stage breaks for all three national series beginning with the 2017 season. Races are now divided into three stages, with pit stops and TV commercial breaks taking place in between each stage.

Stage breaks haven’t been unanimously well-received by fans since their introduction. NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell is aware of that, though he said Monday they serve the role of allowing TV to “load up their commercials.”

“If you asked about race control when I was up there, the reason why I’m probably kicked out is I would go absolutely crazy when a caution came out, and we’re just running laps. It drives me crazy,” O’Donnell said on Door Bumper Clear. “If you ask John Probst [EVP and chief racing development officer], if a red flag came out, I would say every television in America just turned off. So, our job is to always speed it up.

“But if you go back to when I first came up in racing, we went away from commercial, racing was going on, nobody saw anything. We introduced the stage breaks so that TV could load up their commercials. Saw that worked pretty well. Now we have some side-by-side racing, which is good.”

NASCAR president admits length of stage cautions is a problem

Furthermore, the length of those stage breaks have come under scrutiny. If you go back to the March 29 race at Martinsville Speedway, Stage 1 nearly ran caution free. The first caution of the race came with two laps remaining in the stage. The green flag did not wave until 18 laps into Stage 2. Several drivers were confused as to why so many laps were rolled under caution. 

O’Donnell admitted it’s an issue they are working to correct. He spoke with drivers this past weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, who told him that NASCAR needed to do something about it, especially at short tracks.

“The next thing to work on is the length of those stage breaks, especially at short tracks,” O’Donnell said. “I’ve heard ‘Get rid of the actual break and just run it.’ When we did that at the road courses, again, small sample size, but it was terrible. But we’re still looking at it. The drivers are pretty loud. I spent some time Friday with a couple guys and [they said], ‘You gotta do something at the Martinsvilles of the world.’

“It is high on the radar to figure out how we keep moving that. Nobody up in race control is saying, ‘Hey, let’s make it longer.’ I think it’s a big focus for us, and we gotta get that right.”