NASCAR has announced a big change to race procedures ahead of the race weekend at Iowa Speedway. The goal is to get the race back under green much faster than in previous weeks.
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Effective immediately, NASCAR will alter its approach to when the caution flies late in the first or second stage of a national series race. If the caution occurs within 10 laps of the stage end, the caution will immediately end the stage.
Instead of running the rest of the advertised laps under caution, the leader will just receive the green and white checkered flag and the the yellow flag simultaneously. NASCAR will score the field as it ran at the time of caution, and it will award the stage points to the top 10 drivers.
The caution will serve as the stage break. This means that the next stage in the race could potentially have more green flag laps than originally advertised due to when the caution fell.
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This change to procedures comes after a race weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in which two separate incidents extended the amount of time spent under caution.
The Cup Series race had a stage 1 caution for a Kyle Larson incident, which set up a late dash to the stage end. The race then went back under caution. The fans saw approximately one green flag lap in 25 minutes.
Daniel Dye then crashed at the end of stage 2 and brought out the caution. The cars circled the track until the stage end and then went through the stage break period. Once again, the time under yellow lasted far longer than anyone wanted.
NASCAR explained on the Hauler Talk podcast that changes could possibly happen to help with the time spent under caution. Now, these changes are in place for the next race on the schedule.
"(The rule change) stems from what happened in Indy, where we've seen all too often a caution comes out before the stage break," NASCAR CEO Steve O'Donnell said on Thursday. "We run a number of caution laps, we try and get back green, stage break comes, and we get back to caution.
"Long periods of caution laps, not enough green flag racing. We heard you. We want to make a change."
O'Donnell acknowledged that this won't be a perfect change. However, NASCAR will learn from it and continue to innovate moving forward. This indicates that more updates to the race procedures could possibly happen in the future.
The time spent under caution will just be the point of emphasis in the immediate future.
