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NASCAR’s race enhancements have set up stages that will see drivers battling for stage wins and playoff bonus points. The impact of accumulating playoff points has a big benefit during the 10-race playoff in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series that starts in September, and it could lead to added pressure on pit road.
A playoff point from a stage win could end up representing the difference between a driver advancing deeper into the playoffs or being eliminated based on the amount of playoff points one carries into a round. Those point perks could be delivered to a driver by some clutch work on pit road.
That fact is not lost on Mike Lepp, the senior athletic advisor at Joe Gibbs Racing, who was the organization’s longtime athletic director working with the team’s pit crews.
“With the new format — can you get those stage wins with a pit stop? Yes, you can,” Lepp told NASCAR.com. “All you got to do is go back to the All-Star Race. If you go back and look at that All-Star stop, which is similar to what this is, we went from fourth to first.”
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In 2015, JGR driver Denny Hamlin used a strong final stop in the Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway to leave pit road with a lead he would not give up over the final 10 laps for the $1 million win.
“I think pit stops are going to start getting looked at even more — more scrutiny and more pressure because winning a stage is points that carry over (to the playoffs). We see every one of these championships have been one or two things. I think the pressure on pit stops is going to go up with the new format.”
Playoff points will be added at the start of the playoffs and then roll over at the start of every subsequent round of the playoffs except for when the four drivers reach the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Interestingly enough, Hamlin advanced to the Round of 8 in 2016 on a best finish tiebreaker over Austin Dillon as they had the same amount of points after the fall race at Talladega.
“You could name 10 instances during the season where that point came from,” Lepp said. “That is what you always try to tell the drivers and tell people. You start thinking about, you win the Daytona 500, you are in the playoff. … Now you go, I can’t just say I’m in the playoffs, I got to still get some points and build a cushion in case something comes down to a tiebreaker. Those stages wins are going to become important — people are going to look at them.
“Are you going to cost yourself a whole race doing something stupid to win a stage and you can’t win the whole race because you did something silly? No. I think you are going to look at it and go, we’ve seen the instances. Look at Tony and Carl in 2011 (Stewart and Edwards finished tied in the standings in 2011, but Stewart won the title on a wins tiebreaker). Tiebreakers can be big deals. I think that’s another pressure thing that these guys have to think about on the over-the-wall stuff.”
The enhancements will also change a crew chief’s thinking as Paul Wolfe, who sits atop the pit box for Brad Keselowski’s No. 2 Team Penske team, told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s Tradin’ Paint on Friday.
“The strategy, calling the race, when to pit, when not to with these segments that will be a big one for me,” Wolfe said.
The 2 team has been known to roll the dice on strategy, whether it’s a call for four fresh tires on the last lap of regulation (under caution) at Fontana in 2015 that saw Keselowski drive up from 18th to the lead on the final lap, or last year at Kentucky, with three wins in hand, when Keselowski and Wolfe gambled on fuel and held off Carl Edwards for a victory.
“I think you’ll see it evolve as we go and people learn how the format’s going to play and strategies and different ideas,” Wolfe said. “As your season goes on, whether or not you get a win early, or if you are trying to race your way in on points, I think guys could be on different strategies during the race depending on what their ultimate goal is for that weekend. … I think you got to be able to adapt and continue to learn as we go to the early stages of the season.
“Whenever there is this much change, a lot of times, I like it. I think it’s exciting. It means there’s opportunity. An opportunity to get a head start on some guys and hopefully we can be a team that does that and have some success early on with all this.”
In addition to earning a playoff point for a stage win, drivers can receive points for finishing in the top 10 of a stage. Those points are part of one’s point total immediately. The race enhancements are part of all three NASCAR national series starting in 2017.