NASCAR: 5 things to complain about with Kyle Busch’s 2019 Truck season over

Stage racing

The introduction of stage racing across NASCAR’s three national series ahead of the 2017 season, which has resulted in all races being split up into three points-paying caution flag-ended segments (four for the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway) has been a hot topic of discussion (and argument) since the announcement about it was made.

This has not slowed down, and it doesn’t appear as though it is going to.

Many NASCAR fans who don’t mind stage racing argue that the stage breaks effectively eliminate the need for “phantom debris cautions” because of the fact that they guarantee two caution flag periods in every races.

Other fans argue that stage racing creates “manufactured racing” in terms of stacking the field back up even when one driver has built up a sizable advantage over the others, and they rebuke the “phantom debris caution” argument with the fact that laps run during these enforced stage breaks still count toward the lap totals of each race.

Then there’s the “participation trophy” argument; why give points to drivers who are running well halfway through a race? After all, we have already seen several instances where race winners don’t end up scoring the most points in a race due to the fact that other drivers scored more stage points than they did.

Have they really earned those additional points, and sometimes those additional playoff points, that they carry with them through the playoffs all the way to the Championship 4?

Regardless of your take on the matter, this is one topic that will never result in a lack of discussion/argument/complaint among NASCAR fans unless it is eliminated from the sport entirely, and that certainly isn’t likely in the foreseeable future.