NASCAR: When was the last off weekend? It’s been a while…

For the first time in more than six months, NASCAR is in the midst of a full off weekend following a packed weekend of championship action at Phoenix Raceway.

Entering the 2020 NASCAR season, we all knew that, if everything went as planned, the offseason would be underway and there would be no live action for several months after leaving Phoenix Raceway.

That has, in fact, happened.

But what we didn’t anticipate is that it would happen twice in the same season.

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Back on Sunday, March 8, Team Penske’s Joey Logano held off Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick to win the fourth race of the Cup Series season at the four-turn, 1.022-mile (1.645-kilometer) oval in Avondale, Arizona, and the series set off for Atlanta Motor Speedway for the following Sunday’s race.

However, the coronavirus pandemic forced the indefinite postponement of that race, and eventually several other indefinite postponements — and cancellations — followed suit. The post-Phoenix “offseason” had come eight months early, and NASCAR then embarked on an unexpected 10-week hiatus, one which was scheduled to have seen eight live Cup Series races but instead saw a ton of virtual competition on iRacing instead, including the six-race eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series — and quite a bit of controversy as well.

Action eventually resumed 70 days later on Sunday, May 17 at Darlington Raceway with a race that had not previously been on the schedule.

By incorporating multiple doubleheaders, multiple midweek races and multiple date changes into the revised (and, quite simply, packed) 2020 schedule, NASCAR was able to get back on schedule by Saturday, August 22, the day of the race at Dover International Speedway which had initially been scheduled to take place on Sunday, May 3.

They not only managed to run a full 36-race Cup Series schedule but a full 33-race Xfinity Series schedule and a full 23-race Truck Series schedule.

The Cup Series ended up running 20 races in a 97-day span when there were supposed to be only 12, and they did it without a full off week. There was one “off” weekend in July, but classifying it in that manner is a stretch to say the very least. It took place only after a Thursday race at Kansas Speedway followed a Sunday race at Texas Motor Speedway.

And that aforementioned 97-day span didn’t lead into any time off, either; action picked right back up at Dover International Speedway the following day on Sunday, August 23, and the 26-race regular season concluded on Saturday, August 29 at Daytona International Speedway.

That led into the regularly scheduled 10 playoff races over the course of the next 10 weekends, which concluded last Sunday, November 8 with Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott securing his first championship.

Team Penske’s Austin Cindric also won his first Xfinity Series championship last weekend, and GMS Racing’s Sheldon Creed won his first Truck Series championship as well.

But this time around, after departing Phoenix Raceway for a second time in eight months, the ensuing lengthy span of time off was anticipated — and, after quite a hectic and unprecedented final six months of the season with practically no time off at all, well-earned by NASCAR, the teams and the drivers.

The current off weekend, the first since May, is the first of 13 off weekends throughout the offseason, as the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season is scheduled to get underway 13 weeks from today with the 63rd annual Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on Sunday, February 14, following qualifying on Wednesday, February 10 and the Bluegreen Vacations Duels on Thursday, February 11.

The 36-race season is scheduled to run through Sunday, November 7, when the championship decider is set to take place at Phoenix Raceway for the second consecutive year.