Should NASCAR get rid of stage racing?

Stage racing is now three years old following its introduction in NASCAR ahead of the 2017 season. Should it remain in the sport, or should it be eliminated?

The 2017 NASCAR season saw the implementation of stage racing. Each race is divided into three stages (four for the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway), and points are awarded to the top 10 drivers at the end of stages one and two, with regular points still awarded at the end of each race to each competitor as well.

Additionally, stage winners each receive one playoff point, which is a point that is added to their point totals after the points/standings resets take place at the beginning of the round of 16, the round of 12 and the round of 8 of the playoffs. Wins are worth five playoff points apiece.

Stages, like the playoffs themselves among other changes NASCAR has made over the years, have been criticized as being gimmicky, and they certainly don’t fit the mold of what you’d expect from a sport that thrives off its grassroots fanbase. It’s no surprise that the fanbase has declined in recent years.

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That leads to the question that has been asked since even before the 2017 season began: should NASCAR get rid of stages?

Yes, stage racing adds the element of strategy. But it’s an unnecessary element of strategy that does nothing to enhance the on-track product.

Fans argue that the planned stage-ending cautions are better than phantom debris cautions, and that much is true. But (a) there are still questionable caution flags thrown at times, and that will never change, and (b) stage-ending cautions still create artificial racing that doesn’t belong in NASCAR, or anywhere for that matter.

Is it really too “old school” or too much to ask for a race to be run without scheduled breaks that create manufactured strategy for which planning for the entire race generally becomes much simpler?

At this point, why not just have 50-lap sprint races each week?

By nature, stage racing also creates another unnecessary element that takes away from the competition itself. Rewarding guys who hit the wall early or make some other silly error but decide not to pit at the end of the stage with more points than anybody else in the field in the stage is just flat-out ridiculous.

While it is true that 10 points for winning a stage is nowhere near 40 points for winning a race and sacrifices are often made, such as not making a late pit stop, to finish stages in the top 10, those point totals still add up.

Drivers have, on several occasions, finished races well outside the top 10 but still placed top five in total race points due to their stage results, and race winners haven’t always been the highest scorers — pretty strange for a playoff system that supposedly rewards wins above everything.

Just look at the differences in the final 2019 championship standings, the standings without playoffs, and the standings without stages. Some of them are quite surprising.

As far as the playoff points are concerned, leave that for the race wins. You shouldn’t be better positioned to make a playoff run because you were leading a random race on lap 130 of lap 250 or something and ended up 28th while someone who ran 11th in the race’s early stages gets nothing playoff-wise with a second place finish.

This is peak participation trophy logic and rewards the wrong individuals for focusing on the wrong aspects of racing.

Again, isn’t the goal to win races? It certainly should be. I know it used to be, but nowadays, it’s like it’s almost not even necessary. Maybe that’s just too “old school”.

Stage racing is one of many controversial topics in NASCAR, and there are certainly things that NASCAR needs to fix before stage racing. But while stage racing likely isn’t going anywhere following its first three seasons in the sport, you really have to wonder why it’s here, what purpose it serves, and above all, whether or not NASCAR should just do away with it.