Vacation time, or study mode? Why NASCAR’s week off means different things to different teams

The sight of the first off weekend on the NASCAR Cup Series calendar is welcomed by all in the garage, if for different reasons. 

For some, it brings a chance to take a breath, reset, and perhaps even take a little vacation. The first seven – or eight, if you include the Clash exhibition event – races have provided enough of a notebook for them to feel good about what they are bringing to the racetrack, and they can confidently stand on the results and their position in the championship standings.

But for some others, it’s a welcome chance for a reset to try and get their act together. Some have a lot of work to do to get things back on track.

“Honestly, I’ve been pretty proud of our speed,” Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney said. “Las Vegas, a mile and a half, I would have liked to have a little bit more. I thought that’s been the most struggle weekend for us… not struggle, I could have run seventh to 10th, but not contend for the win. Whereas everywhere else, I feel we’ve had pretty decent race-contending speed.

“We have to keep working on pit road. That’s been a topic for us the last month or so, so we've got to clean some stuff up there. The off week, I think, gives us some time to sit down and really assess, all right, can we dig into this deeper? Where is the actual issue, and how do we resolve it? So I know a lot of that stuff is going to go on.”

Blaney sits second in the Cup Series standings on the strength of a victory at Phoenix Raceway and five top-10 finishes. He is one of three drivers with five top-10 finishes in seven races, leading the series. 

The pit crew on the No. 12 team, however, has taken its lumps. Blaney’s group ranks low among all those on pit road, and multiple issues have forced him to come through the field on more than one occasion to salvage a finish. Phoenix ended with a victory. Darlington Raceway as a third-place result.

In the same shop, but in a different team room, will be the No. 22 team of Joey Logano. While Logano doesn’t think his team, led by Paul Wolfe, necessarily has an agenda for the off week, there are clearly things to look at.

“We’re trying to look at some of the races to see where our strengths and weaknesses are, and there is no doubt our strengths are short tracks, and they have been for multiple years now,” Logano said. “So, we’ll see what we can try to do to make our mile-and-a-half stuff a little bit faster. (Darlington), that was the first time with that rules package at a bigger track, so trying to figure that stuff out, too, will be important.” 

While happy with his speed, Blaney reckons his No. 12 team's pit stops could use some fine-tuning. Kevin Cox/Getty Images

Logano is 12th in the standings with two top-10 finishes. It’s been an up-and-down start to the season for him, with laps led in four different races, a pole, but no consistency. A pair of third-place finishes from Daytona and Martinsville have been the bright spots, and it’s why he’s yo-yoed up and down the standings from inside the top 10 to as far down as 16th. 

On the flip, Shane van Gisbergen is having a surprisingly solid start to the season. It's a surprise only in the sense that not many oddsmakers would have had him as the leading Trackhouse Racing car going into the season’s first break, but at 14th in the points, he is. 

Van Gisbergen, who sat as high as fifth in points a few weeks ago, has three top-11 finishes in seven races and has been holding his own on the ovals. Martinsville Speedway was a career-best fifth-place qualifying effort, and he averaged a ninth-place running position.

“It’s going well, but we still need a bit more speed,” said van Gisbergen. “Las Vegas was a bit of a surprise; we thought we were going to be good there, and we all struggled. So, those types of tracks, we probably need to get better as a team. But overall, on our side, the 97, it’s been pretty decent. We just need to keep getting better and make fewer mistakes.” 

Daniel Suarez had been the leading driver at Spire Motorsports until this past weekend, when Carson Hocevar overtook him in points. All three drivers are now grouped together at 15th, 16th and 17th in the standings, and specifically for Suarez, there is no denying that he has been outperforming the expectations many had for him in the No. 7 car. 

It not only proves he was right to make the move that he did, but it will go a long way toward job security. At this point, Suarez is doing what he needs to do.

“I’m going to Greece, and I hope when I come back everything is the same,” Suarez said with a laugh. “Definitely happy (with the start of the season). Not satisfied, because we always want more, but very happy with how things are going. But we can’t stay still. I have a lot of work to do before I leave, and when I come back, we have a lot of things we have to work on. So, I’m going to be gone for (a bit) to recharge the batteries, because a lot of people talk about the first seven weeks of racing, but it’s not only that. I’ve been working hard since December and January. So it’s always nice to disconnect for a few days.”

Chase Briscoe knows exactly what his No. 19 team from Joe Gibbs Racing needs to do: chief among them, qualify better and earn stage points. The ability to earn stage points helps a team’s cause with the championship, no matter the format. Briscoe has earned 15 stage points compared to the series-leading 64 from Blaney.

Briscoe is 21st in the point standings after being buried as deep as 33rd after four races. The team has battled just about everything thus far, some of which they are putting on themselves.

“I think just trying to execute the weekends, whether it’s qualifying or race finish, or, honestly, the mechanical stuff is out of our control,” Briscoe said. “But I think just executing weekends. Darlington was a great example. I’m going to run fifth, and I make a stupid decision with two laps to go and kind of crash myself and run 12th. So, executing the weekends from start to finish is the biggest thing for us.”

Cup Series teams will pick back up at Bristol Motor Speedway for 15 consecutive weeks of racing before the second and final off weekend of the year in late August. The final stretch of the season will be 14 consecutive weeks.