NASCAR to expand practice time at Cup events

NASCAR Cup Series teams will get 50 minutes of practice at each event, beginning next month at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The new format will feature a single 50-minute session for all teams (no groups) without a mandatory break. Accompanying the change, teams will be given an additional set of tires from Goodyear.

The revised format will not include the races at Daytona International Speedway (Aug. 29) and Talladega Superspeedway (Oct. 25), as they are superspeedway events. There is no practice on those weekends and only single-car qualifying.

“I don’t think we need hours more practice, but I enjoy the weekends when we have 50 minutes with two sets of tires,” said Kyle Larson last weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway. “That way you have time to make an adjustment and learn something from it.”

All impound procedures will remain in effect. This will continue to limit the adjustments teams can make, and practice will continue to be held from pit road. There will be no changes made in the garage.

“I would love to have multiple practices in a weekend, and the opportunity to try different setups and theories and find what we as drivers respond to,” Ryan Preece of RFK Racing said this week. “That is the 100% way to find a path of what you want as a driver.”

NASCAR reduced its on-track schedule during the pandemic and kept some of those changes in place. The practice schedule was initially cut to 20 minutes (later expanded to 25) for drivers, and the field was split into groups for their track time based on the performance metric.

There will be a 50-minute practice session this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway because the Brickyard 400 is considered a crown jewel event.