Two of the six road course races for 2023 in the Cup Series are now in the books, and we’re hearing a lot of thoughts of the new rule of Stage ends without Stage breaks.
One of the big by-products of this change was supposed to be the return of road course strategy. No more leaving crew chiefs with the decision to either get stage points or win the race. Now, they could go back to pre-planning how many pit stops they would make. Possibly, if they so chose, to be the first one to pit last.
Let’s be honest, before we all decide it’s a huge miss, it’s only a sample size of two. And, let’s remember the other reason for the elimination of breaks…the length of them.
Each break came with, at least, four caution laps. Or roughly 10-15 minutes of relative in-action. Sonoma took 2 hours, 40 minutes and 12 seconds.
I’ll call that and win and that that trade-off any week.