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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The early reviews from NASCAR’s first race weekend with a stage-based format laden with performance incentives are in. For the sport’s top competition official, those reviews were boffo.
Steve O’Donnell — NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer — held an informal media scrum after Sunday’s Daytona 500, fielding questions about the race’s three-stage process, the five-minute pit repair clock, and the multiple multi-car crashes that affected all three national-series events.
“I’d say overall really pleased,” O’Donnell said in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series garage at Daytona International Speedway. “Saw a lot of great, hard racing. Everybody knows that every driver wants to win the Daytona 500. We saw drivers up on the wheel all day long, racing hard, and that’s exactly what we expected from the format.”
O’Donnell said he was content with the frenzied competition that produced race winners in Kurt Busch for the Daytona 500, Ryan Reed (XFINITY Series) and Kaz Grala (Camping World Truck Series) in the other national circuits. All three races were marked with attrition in several sizable accidents, but O’Donnell chalked that up to the high stakes of racing for victories at the historic 2.5-mile speedway.
“I think people wanted to win,” O’Donnell said. “People want to win at Daytona and we wanted drivers racing hard up front and racing hard for wins. So that’s we expected. In terms of good, hard racing, I think that’s what you saw all three days.”
O’Donnell noted that despite the wrecks that snared Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick among others, those two drivers had a semblance of consolation prizes with an accumulation of points by virtue of their stage victories.
O’Donnell also pointed out that the five-minute time limit for repairs made on pit road worked as anticipated. He said he did not expect officials to expand the time span, noting that no teams had raised an issue with it over the course of the weekend.
“I doubt it because this came from the teams,” O’Donnell said, “and when we looked at what was the proper amount of time, their suggestion was five minutes because they thought their day was really done if they couldn’t fix something within the five-minute clock. Obviously if a lot of folks come to us from a team standpoint and say we need more, but the whole point of that was to make sure the cars were safe and in race-able condition.”
O’Donnell also said he was content with the number of laps that were completed under caution between stages — seven after Stage 1 and five after Stage 2 — but said that the number would be a “work in progress” during the season.
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