NASCAR has revised its weekend schedules, making them more closely mirror last year’s schedules instead of reducing track time for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams.
NASCAR stated last month that officials were looking to reduce track time for teams in all three national series. Now, the plan is to give Cup teams a similar amount of practice as last year.
Schedules for Daytona Speedweeks and Atlanta — recently updated — show changes that give Cup teams more time on track than previously listed.
At Daytona, Cup teams were scheduled to have two 55-minute sessions Saturday. Now, they’ll have one session that will be 3 hours, 55 minutes to prepare for Sunday’s Daytona 500 qualifying.
Also, Cup teams were to get 55 minutes in the final practice session Feb. 25 before the Daytona 500. That session will now be 1 hour, 25 minutes. Last year’s final Cup practice before the race was 1 hour, 40 minutes.
Cup teams will have less track time overall at Daytona than last year. That’s mainly because Cup teams are not on the track three days. Last year, Cup teams were not on track two days.
Cup teams will have a total of 9 hours, 55 minutes of practice time during Speedweeks. That’s 1 hour, 40 minutes less than what was scheduled last year during Speedweeks.
At Atlanta, NASCAR had cut each of the two Cup sessions by 30 minutes.
Those sessions have now been restored to the same amount of time teams had last year. Cup teams are scheduled to have 1 hour, 25 minutes of practice on March 3. Cup teams are scheduled to have 1 hour, 20 minutes of practice on March 4, the day before the race.
The schedules at Daytona and Atlanta for Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series teams have not changed from last month. Xfinity teams are scheduled to have 1 hour, 25 minutes less of practice at Daytona this year compared to last year’s schedule. Truck teams are slated to have 30 minutes less practice at Daytona this year compared to last.
Both Xfinity and Truck teams will each have 30 minutes less practice time at Atlanta this year compared to last year.