Many race fans have been confused by the new format this year that divides Monster Energy NASCAR Cup races into three stages.
Sunday morning at Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR officials showed they’re still getting used to the new format, too. After SiriusXM tweeted out the detailed procedural information officials provide to crew chiefs before every race, award-winning NASCAR reporter Bob Pockrass immediately noticed something wrong — the race’s stage lengths.
Believe stages are wrong on this sheet. Should be lap 130 end stage 1, lap 260 end of stage 2 and then race is 500. https://t.co/7TvyHkqb2x
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) April 2, 2017
Here’s the crew chief handout:
Here is the crew chief handout for today’s #STP500 . pic.twitter.com/mdv0bBw99i
— SiriusXM NASCAR (@SiriusXMNASCAR) April 2, 2017
Were NASCAR officials confused by their own rules regarding the stages? No. Turns out those 60/120/200 stage lengths on Sunday’s handouts were the lengths for last week’s race at Auto Club Speedway in California. Hey, we’ve all done something like that before, taking a template of a document or a form letter and updating it — without changing some vital information.
NASCAR quickly corrected the error, informing crew chiefs of the correct stage and race lengths.
Green flag for the STP 500 is 2:13 p.m. ET.