Building Speed’s 2024 By The Numbers feature continues with Part II: Where and When. The end of a season is not just a time to look back at the last year, but also to look for trends over the years. This report shows a lot of changes.
I’ll mostly talk about the 36 points-paying races, although I will mention the other races occasionally.
Table of contents
2024 Where and When: States
Although Charlotte, NC and Daytona Beach, FL are NASCAR’s primary headquarters, the series races more in Virginia than any other state in the union. The Commonwealth of Virginia hosted four races in 2023: two at Martinsville and two at Richmond. That will change next year when Richmond goes to just one race.
- Florida and Tennessee both hosted three races in 2024
- Kansas, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, South Caroline, Alabama and Texas each had two races.
Back in 2001, North Carolina and Virginia both had four races a year. They’re down to a total of six combined now. But the number of states hasn’t changed much. In 2001, NASCAR visited 19 different states. In 2024, the total is 20.
- 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 Where and When: Tracks
Twenty-six different circuits hosted NASCAR’s 36 points-paying races. Of those 26, only 10 hosted two races. The other 16 tracks hosted one each.
Compare those numbers to 2017, the first year of stage racing. Thirteen tracks hosted two races and 10 tracks hosted one, for a total of 23 tracks. That’s the same breakdown as in 2001, the first year in which the NASCAR schedule consisted of 36 races.
As the diversity of track types and locations increases, fewer tracks will be able to host two races a year.
What has changed is which tracks have two races. In 2001, New Hampshire, Pocono, Michigan, Dover, and Rockingham each had two races. This year, they have one race — except for Rockingham, which isn’t even on the Cup schedule.
Conversely, Las Vegas, Kansas and Phoenix, each of which hosted just one race in 2001, all have two races this year.
2024 Where and When: Days
Saturday night races were once a big thing for the Cup Series. Not in 2024.
Thirty-three of the 36 races (91.7%) ran on a Sunday. Only 5.6% were run on Saturday and just one — the rain-delayed Daytona 500 — happened on a Monday.
Honorable mention goes to Michigan, which stared on a Sunday and had to be finished on Monday. I count it as a Sunday race since it started on Sunday.
Historical Perspective on Days Races Ran
Ignoring 2020’s COVID-induced mess of a schedule, the smallest number of races run on a Sunday since the series went to a 36-race schedule in 2001 was in 2011, when 25 races (69.4%) happened on Sunday and eight races (22.2%) took place on Saturday.
The graph below shows days raced from 2017, when stage racing started, to the present season.
Track Types
NASCAR has changed the distribution of track types significantly in the last few years. The first modern dirt track was introduced in 2021 (and abandoned three years later.) And while NASCAR started out on street courses, Chicago was the first one on the schedule since 1958.
The graph below shows each type of track on the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series schedule and what percentage of the schedule it constitutes. I classify the tracks as:
- Supershort (less than a mile)
- Short (1 to 1.49 miles)
- Intermediate (1.5 miles, non-superspeedways)
- Other (2.0 mile and up, non-superspeedways)
- Superspeedways
- Road Courses
- Street Courses
If you start with the red slice in the upper left, the slices increase with track length — except for the street courses. Because street courses are weird.
The biggest recent change to the types of tracks run (after introducing dirt and street racing) was the transformation of Atlanta from an intermediate track to something more akin to a short superspeedway in 2022.
But this year’s schedule continued a trend toward fewer short-track races. In the early days, NASCAR was overwhelmingly short-track racing. The series expanded and introduced more and more types of tracks. Seasons had as many as 60 races. When the Modern Era started in 1972, that was pulled back to a more manageable 31 races.
Learn more about how NASCAR changed the regular-season track-types distribution.
Playoff Composition
NASCAR also changed the playoff race composition significantly this year, in part due to NBC needing two weeks off to broadcast the Olympics. As a result, this year featured two road courses and two superspeedways rather than the usual one of each.
There was also one fewer intermediate track in the playoffs this year and Phoenix was the only 1—1.49-mile track. The randomness introduced by two superspeedways and two road course (I believe) contributed to the larger-than-usual number of fan calls to change the playoff format.
And that’s your 2024 Where and When: By The Numbers post.
Check the other posts in this series if you didn’t find something you wanted to know. If you have questions, submit them at ask (atsymbol) buildingspeed (dot) org.
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