{"id":578506,"date":"2026-04-03T01:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T01:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/578506\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T01:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T01:00:13","slug":"nascar-insider-offers-alternative-to-denny-hamlin-dale-earnhardt-jr-beef-with-caution-lengths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/578506\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insider offers alternative to Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr. beef with caution lengths"},"content":{"rendered":"

The length of stage cautions in NASCAR<\/a> has come into focus this week following this past Sunday\u2019s Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway. Denny Hamlin got the conversation started on Monday\u2019s \u201cActions Detrimental<\/a>\u201d podcast, calling on NASCAR to find a way to shorten the length of stage cautions. Dale Earnhardt Jr. also chimed in, adding that too often, the stage caution laps eat up too much of the next stage. <\/p>\n

There have been calls for NASCAR to stop counting laps on the stage breaks. Jeff Gluck of The Athletic argued against that idea on Thursday. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want them to stop counting laps on the stage breaks. I think those laps need to count. If you stop counting the laps, and you\u2019re just running, you\u2019re extending the actual distance of the race by some unknown amount of laps,\u201d Gluck said on the Gluckcast<\/a>. \u201cStage breaks have already hurt the purity aspect of it. I don\u2019t want them to go, \u2018It\u2019s the 500, but we had about X amount of laps that we didn\u2019t count.\u2019 It\u2019s still the race, it\u2019s still going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be fine not stopping for stage breaks, I was on that for the road courses. They didn\u2019t even make it through the whole season doing that because they felt it made it too boring, and I also understand it\u2019s not reasonable for TV because they\u2019re paying the bills. They have to get their commercials in.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASCAR insider offers fix to stage caution length issue<\/p>\n

Gluck does have a potential solution. His idea is to make Stage 2 longer. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re going to compromise, my solution would be when it comes into eating into the next stage, just make Stage 2 longer,\u201d Gluck said. \u201cThat is what I think should happen because in a lot of cases, Stage 1 and Stage are about the same length, and then Stage 3 is the longer stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust make Stage 2 longer to account for the stage break, and then it won\u2019t be as big of a deal to lose laps off that stage because I agree it\u2019s weird when Stage 2 is already 10, 15, 20 percent over by the time it even gets started. I just think, personally, if you stop counting the laps in the middle of a Cup race, it\u2019s getting into some murky territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stage caution length is an issue, for sure, one that is on NASCAR\u2019s radar. Cup Series managing director\u00a0Brad Moran\u00a0admitted Wednesday that the length of stage cautions were too long at Martinsville<\/a>. Moran said the sanctioning body is \u201caware\u201d of the outcry from both drivers and fans, and they\u2019re working on giving everyone \u201cas much green flag racing as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly didn\u2019t like how long it took us at Martinsville. We\u2019re aware of it, for sure, and we\u2019ll work with our broadcast partners to try to minimize it the best we can,\u201d Moran told\u00a0SiriusXM NASCAR Radio<\/a>. \u201cWe may look at different procedures down the road but again, it\u2019s all about trying to give the fans as much green flag racing as possible. Martinsville didn\u2019t work out very well for us the way these cautions fell and obviously, being on the smallest track we go to, it magnifies it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The length of stage cautions in NASCAR has come into focus this week following this past Sunday\u2019s Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-578506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}