2024 Laps and Miles: By The Numbers

Building Speed’s 2024 By The Numbers feature starts with a look at the Laps and Miles run in 2024. The big story in that department this year was the weather. Despite Mother Nature dissing stock cars, we managed to get in a surprising portion of the scheduled racing.

Note that I’ll mostly be talking about the 36 points-paying races, although I will mention the other races occasionally.

Laps Run

In 2024, NASCAR scheduled a total of 9,805 laps for the Cup Series. Taking into account rain- and darkness-shortened races, the series ran only 9,744 laps, for a deficit of 61 laps.

• Rain or darkness shortened two of the 36 races (11.1%), for a total of 168 laps not run.
  • Rain cut off the Coca-Cola 600, eliminating 151 laps.
  • Darkness ended the Chicago Street race 17 laps short of its scheduled completion.
• Thirteen of 36 races went into overtime (36%), which added 107 laps.
• Most notably, Nashville ran 31 extra laps (10.3%) in five overtimes, which set a new record for number of overtimes in a single race.

I suspect most people are happy to trade that much overtime excitement for missing laps in a very long race that has, perhaps, lost its purpose as an extreme test of man and machine.

Miles Run

Five hundred laps at Martinsville is not the same as 500 laps at Charlotte or (heaven forbid) 500 laps at COTA. So let’s look at the same numbers in terms of miles.

NASCAR scheduled the Cup Series to run 12,765.3 miles in 2024. The series actually ran 12,649.9 miles (I’m rounding to the nearest tenth of a mile.) The deficit is 115.4 miles, which sort of sounds like a lot. But percentage wise, fans got to see 99.1% of the promised miles.

• Of the two races shortened:
  • Rain clipped 226.5 miles off the Charlotte oval.
  • Darkness did the same for 37.4 miles at the Chicago Street Race for a total of 263.9 miles missed.
• Of the races providing bonus miles, Nashville added the most with 41.3 miles. The second Talladega race ran an extra 18.6 miles.

2024 Laps and Miles Compared to Previous Years

In terms of absolute numbers, 2024 comes in second for most miles and laps missed since stage racing began. 2021 holds the record with 186 miles. But even 2021’s missed 185.7 miles means the series ran 98.6% of the promised distances.

This table also shows how the number of laps scheduled has fallen through the years. That’s partially due to cutting some races back in length, but also because NASCAR added more road courses to the schedule. Road courses are longer and thus run fewer laps than ovals.

The miles scheduled have also decreased over the eight years of stage racing, from a high of 13,966.2 miles scheduled in 2017 to the 12,765.3 miles scheduled this year. That represents a decline of 1200.9 miles — equivalent to two Coca-Cola 600s.

How Far Is That?

Let’s focus on the positive and ignore the missing miles for a moment. A driver who completed all 12,650 miles this year would have driven a distance:

• Equivalent to halfway around the world at the equator.
• Slightly less than driving the longest continuous road in the world and almost back again. The Trans-Siberian Highway runs from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. Bonus: You don’t have to worry about your cool suit not working.
• Equal to circling the moon at its equator 5.85 times.

2024 Laps and Miles Big Story: Mother Nature was NOT a NASCAR Fan

In evaluating this data, remember that NASCAR had terrible luck with weather, especially early in the season.

• NASCAR moved the Busch Light Clash back a day due to an incoming atmospheric river that caused record-breaking rainfall. With no heat races cancelled, teams the entire event in a single day.
• Rain delayed the Daytona 500 from Sunday to Monday and eliminated the second practice.
• Rain washed out the first Richmond race’s qualifying and we saw the first use of wet weather tires in the cup series under race conditions
• The first Kansas race was delayed several hours by rain.
• The first All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro was almost flooded out. The track made a huge effort to restore facilities in short order.
• The Coca-Cola 600 became the Coca-Cola 374.
• Rain forced NASCAR to merge groups at Gateway for one 30-minute practice session
• Rain turned the normal two-round qualifying format into a single round at Iowa.
• New Hampshire started late and finished in the rain thanks to Goodyear’s wet weather tires.
• After moving to one practice session instead of groups at Nashville, teams got only 15 minutes or so of practice. Weather concerns paused the race at lap 137.
• Chicago — after every forecast promised no rain, had rain.
• To add insult to injury, the last four races mentioned (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nashville and Chicago) were one right after another.
• Michigan had no qualifying due to rain and a shortened practice.

Despite that, rain, lightning and darkness only ended two races ended early. Qualifying happened at all by two points-paying races (New Hampshire and Michigan.)

That’s the 2024 Laps and Miles by the Numbers.

Next up is where we raced and when.

All posts summarizing the 2024 Cup Series season can be found on the 2024 by-the-numbers page.