NASCAR has come up with a possible solution for the widely hated fuel savings, and the race in Talladega is going to be the first trial for something that's going to have a lot of people talking.

Fans have always hated how drivers lift instead of coasting during longer stages to save fuel and avoid an additional pit stop. Drivers end up going two or three wide at 75-50 percent of their full speed, sending the pack into gridlock, exactly what happened in Daytona.

"There’s certainly a lot of feedback from the fans that don’t always like to see some of the three-wide fuel saving that happens mostly at Talladega and Daytona," NASCAR EVP John Probst said on the Hauler Talk podcast.

"Coming out of Daytona, we have been working hand-in-hand with a lot of our race teams, trying to largely break into two categories of things that we could do. One being the sporting-related things, like rules around pit stops or stage lengths or things of that nature. The other being in a technical bucket, which would mean car changes, spoiler, power levels and things of that nature,” he added.

That kind of showing at the Great American Race prompted NASCAR to get back to the drawing board, and their solution is to flip the duration of each stage. Last year, Talladega saw the stage lengths at 60, 60, and 68.

The plan is to flip that with a near 100-lap first stage, followed by two stages around 50 laps each. That would mean that the lengthy first stage would bring in a change in the strategic battle, with teams working out the best fix between one and two stoppers. Drivers would have to work on fuel-saving in the first stage, and manage their track positions in the other two.

The Jack Link’s 500 at the 2.66-mile Talladega gets underway in about two weeks on April 26.

Apart from this massive development, NASCAR also had one more announcement for fans.

Thunder returns as NASCAR plans to test multiple things

NASCAR is also returning the Preseason Thunder test session at Daytona, and is considering January 2027 for the event. Dating back to the 1990s, teams made a trip to Daytona in January to run tests for several days. It was banned in 2008 for a short while before it returned in 2012, but was pulled back in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure.

In light of the new changes, testing has now become imperative in the sport.

NASCAR has plans of testing “some different power levels and spoilers and maybe some other car-type things,” at the Preseason Thunder now, according to Probst.

Only time will tell if NASCAR will be able to get fans back on the same page with these new changes.

Let us know your comments below

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Afreen Kabir