NASCAR announces 2015 Sprint Cup testing policy

The NASCAR National Series Unified Testing policy, outlined in the 2015 rule book, breaks down the schedule into three types of tests -- NASCAR-approved tire manufacturer tire tests, NASCAR tests and Open Team tests.

"I think we've got a system here that can breathe and evolve as the industry requires," Gene Stefanyshyn, NASCAR vice president innovation and racing development, told NASCAR.com. "I think we've got enough flexibility to manage this. It's all in the electronic rule book now so everybody can understand it, the schedules will be there so hopefully we can also communicate very, very well with everybody."

NASCAR announced earlier this year that it was eliminating private team testing beginning with the conclusion of the 2014 racing season. Previously, organizations were provided four open NASCAR tests at tracks that hosted Sprint Cup Series events, and were allowed to test as often as they chose on tracks not hosting NASCAR-sanctioned events.

After meeting with teams in July, Stefanyshyn said the general consensus was that testing was expensive, its value was questionable because of the venues and "it was very time and travel intensive."

"It doesn't necessarily line up with Goodyear testing and because it's unlimited it can drive some inequity between big teams and small teams," Stefanyshyn said officials were told.

When NASCAR announced the testing ban, he said, what was lost in the conversation was the fact that the sanctioning body was trying to develop a consolidated testing plan going forward.

When the 2015 rules package was announced in September, "we announced the ban on private testing," he said. "But at the same time we did signal to everybody that we were ... in flight on trying to develop a new proposal for testing.

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"At the time when we said ... it was banned, I think that might have been lost to a few people. They didn't hear the 'we're trying to work ... to come up with a better alternative.' "

Four teams (unless otherwise specified) will participate in each Goodyear tire test based on their position in the 2015 NASCAR owners' points standings.

One representative from each of the four will take part, and that team will be the only one allowed to participate from that organization in the open test at that track. The open tests are not mandatory.

The team pairings for the Goodyear tests are broken down into the following three groups:

Stewart-Haas Racing, JTG Daugherty Racing, Team Penske and Joe Gibbs Racing;

Richard Childress Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates; Roush Fenway Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing;

Hendrick Motorsports, Furniture Row Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports, BK Racing.

Most organizations will be involved in five Goodyear tests, although the grouping of Hendrick, Furniture Row, RPM and BK Racing will take part in only four.

The only variations to the policy thus far come at Las Vegas, which will host a Goodyear tire test only (Jan. 19) with individual teams from SHR, JTG, Penske and JGR taking part; and there will be an open team test on Thursday, Feb. 26, at Atlanta Motor Speedway leading into that track's race weekend activities.

"The … beauty of this is, we were all three (NASCAR, Goodyear and the individual teams) going off independently, doing things," Stefanyshyn said. "Goodyear's trying to do a tire test, they’re trying to get teams to participate, teams are busy going off testing (elsewhere), so they have difficulty getting the participation they want.

"We try to put a NASCAR test together and we've got to get Goodyear and the teams to come and they’re all busy. And then you've got the teams that are doing their testing on tracks they're not going to run on.

"So … we've created a schedule for the whole of next year that enables everybody to do their testing but also we can now work together on the things we need to work together on. If I need 10 cars, the cars are there and the tires are there. It gives us more ability to do more work together and it gets rid of a lot of the organizational friction of trying to bring people together."

No tests are scheduled for nine of the 23 tracks hosting Sprint Cup events in 2015.

Here's a complete look at the 2015 testing schedule:

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