Racing
2021 NASCAR Preview: Short Tracks
I saved my favorite kind of racing for last. Everyone’s talking about road courses this year, but short tracks make up a third of the circuits in the season. So, before we pull all the […]
Racing
Auto Club Speedway of California
2021 NASCAR Preview: ‘Other’ Tracks
Fontana (the old Fontana), Pocono, Indy and Michigan are larger than intermediate tracks, but not superspeedways. The number of such tracks is going way down in 2021, which means that drivers who did well at […]
Racing
2021 NASCAR Preview: Best Drivers at Intermediate Tracks
There are fewer intermediate tracks on the 2021 NASCAR schedule than at any time since 2000. But they still make up a quarter of the schedule. We’ve looked at superspeedways and road courses already. Let’s […]
Road Courses
How Does Having Seven Road Courses in 2021 Change the Championship Race?
Once upon a time, road courses were the least popular type of racing among NASCAR fans — and also among many drivers. But that’s changed. And it’ll change even more given that there are seven […]
Racing
Which NASCAR Drivers are Best at Superspeedways?
If asked who the best superspeedway driver was, most NASCAR fans would say Dale Earnhardt. But what do the numbers say? This post is part of a preseason series on how the 2021 NASCAR schedule […]
Schedules
The NASCAR 2021 Schedule
The NASCAR Cup Series will run at a very different distribution of tracks in 2021 than in any year past. Here’s the first in a series of posts looking at schedule changes and how they […]
Racing
Laps Led and Lead Changes: All Laps are Not Created Equal
NASCAR provides lots of statistics, but beware: the numbers can be deceiving. That’s especially true for laps led and lead changes Laps Led The box score for each race always includes statistics like how many […]
Practice
Which Drivers Improve their Finishing Positions in Doubleheaders?
How has eliminating practices affected finishing positions in NASCAR races? Unfortunately, we can’t create a parallel, COVID-free universe as a control system to answer the question. However, COVID has forced NASCAR to run four weekends […]
Qualifying
Why NASCAR Quarantine Qualifying Had To Change
My return to the unique problems posed by quarantine qualifying is in part because Clint Bowyer tweeted that the pseudo-random draw was really messing him up and it wasn’t fair. I wanted to know if […]
Qualifying
Does NASCAR Need Qualifying?
I’ve made the argument that NASCAR needs at least a little practice. But what about qualifying? Does it have a place in post-pandemic NASCAR? The Problem Racing with the coronavirus forced NASCAR to cancel everything […]