{"id":609317,"date":"2026-04-17T02:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/609317\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T02:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:30:08","slug":"nascar-president-steve-odonnell-makes-case-for-stage-breaks-confirms-length-is-high-on-the-radar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/609317\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR President Steve O\u2019Donnell makes case for stage breaks, confirms length is \u2018high on the radar\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR<\/a> introduced stage breaks for all three national series beginning with the 2017 season. Races are now divided into three stages, with pit stops and TV commercial breaks taking place in between each stage. <\/p>\n

Stage breaks haven\u2019t been unanimously well-received by fans since their introduction. NASCAR president Steve O\u2019Donnell is aware of that, though he said Monday they serve the role of allowing TV to \u201cload up their commercials.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you asked about race control when I was up there, the reason why I\u2019m probably kicked out is I would go absolutely crazy when a caution came out, and we\u2019re just running laps. It drives me crazy,\u201d O\u2019Donnell said on Door Bumper Clear<\/a>. \u201cIf you ask John Probst [EVP and chief racing development officer], if a red flag came out, I would say every television in America just turned off. So, our job is to always speed it up. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you go back to when I first came up in racing, we went away from commercial, racing was going on, nobody saw anything. We introduced the stage breaks so that TV could load up their commercials. Saw that worked pretty well. Now we have some side-by-side racing, which is good.\u201d <\/p>\n

NASCAR president admits length of stage cautions is a problem<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the length of those stage breaks have come under scrutiny. If you go back to the March 29 race at Martinsville Speedway, Stage 1 nearly ran caution free. The first caution of the race came with two laps remaining in the stage. The green flag did not wave until 18 laps into Stage 2. Several drivers were confused as to why so many laps were rolled under caution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell admitted it\u2019s an issue they are working to correct. He spoke with drivers this past weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway, who told him that NASCAR needed to do something about it, especially at short tracks. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe next thing to work on is the length of those stage breaks, especially at short tracks,\u201d O\u2019Donnell said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard \u2018Get rid of the actual break and just run it.\u2019 When we did that at the road courses, again, small sample size, but it was terrible. But we\u2019re still looking at it. The drivers are pretty loud. I spent some time Friday with a couple guys and [they said], \u2018You gotta do something at the Martinsvilles of the world.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is high on the radar to figure out how we keep moving that. Nobody up in race control is saying, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s make it longer.\u2019 I think it\u2019s a big focus for us, and we gotta get that right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR introduced stage breaks for all three national series beginning with the 2017 season. Races are now divided…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-609317","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\/609317","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=609317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}