NASCAR introduced stage racing in 2017, with points being awarded to the top 10 finishers on two predetermined laps (three for the Coca-Cola 600) in each race, plus a playoff point going to the stage winner.
Though playoff points are a thing of the past, thanks to NASCAR’s removal of the knockout playoff format after a 12-year run, stage racing still exists in 2026, and it remains unchanged. In fact, the only change to the points format is the fact that race winners now score 55 points, rather than 40.
Drivers can still make up for poor finishes by running well during stages, even if the race winner is now guaranteed to, at the very least, finish no lower than second in points scored in a standard race. A race winner had previously been able to finish as low as 11th in points scored, while a 16th place finisher registered the highest point total, which made zero sense whatsoever.
On top of that, stage racing takes away an element of unpredictability, and the strategy decisions that come with it, simply because of the guaranteed caution flag periods that come at the end of each stage.
Carl Edwards, who retired just before NASCAR introduced stage racing at the start of the 2017 season, tried to warn NASCAR, the media, and the fans about the gimmicky nature of stage racing at Daytona International Speedway back in 2012, after Bruton Smith had proposed “competition cautions”.
NASCAR clearly had no interest in listening.
“Let’s just start at the beginning,” Edwards said at the time. “Let’s just lay something out here for you guys. Is it everyone in this room, is it your understanding, that when they throw the green flag, right, that the only reason another flag is going to come out, like a yellow one or a red one, before that checkered flag comes out, [is] if there is a condition on the race track that is unsafe to continue the race – is that what everybody understands?
“If we start getting away from that and we say, okay, halfway through the race, we’re going to throw a caution. We’re all going to line back up. Well, now it’s two races, where the first race doesn’t even matter. Now you’ve just got a shorter race.
“The lead in basketball is a figurative one. It’s a score. So it’s as if you stop the quarter in basketball and then you even the score. In racing, I go out there and I gain an advantage, maybe not at this track [Daytona], but at most tracks, I gain a big advantage, that caution erases that advantage. It’s my opinion, my humble opinion, I’m not saying what’s right or wrong, it’s my opinion that that takes something away from the sport.”
Ironically, it was a controversial debris caution that ultimately robbed Edwards of the 2016 championship in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and the topic of controversial debris cautions has been used to justify NASCAR’s approach for having at least two planned cautions in each event.
Still, what Edwards described is exactly what’s happened. Yes, NASCAR has made up for the idea of the first two stages not mattering by awarding stage points, but even stage points water down the importance of actually scoring a decent race result.
Winning two stages, which basically amounts to leading the race at two random mid-race laps, is worth the same as 20 whole positions in the finishing order. A driver can finish a race outside of the top 20 and still finish second in total points scored.
Given NASCAR credit for incentivizing winning by making victories worth 15 extra points, but beyond that, winning stages is arguably more valuable that actually finishing well.
Edwards certainly wasn’t the only driver who was anti-stage racing in 2012, but his explanation remains the biggest warning of what was to come if NASCAR opted for the gimmicky route.
While his abrupt retirement was largely attributed to the gimmicky nature of the Championship 4 format, specifically after the way he was denied the 2016 title, perhaps his decision to stay away had something to do with NASCAR’s decision to implement stage racing, which came less than two weeks after his retirement was announced in January 2017.
Follow