Thursday morning, NASCAR announced a change to its green-white-checkered finish format. Now, instead of just one attempt to finish the race under green – we’ll have three.
“We want to do all we can to finish our races under green-flag conditions – the fans want to see that and so do the competitors,” said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR Vice president of Competition. “We felt that putting a cap at three attempts to finish the race under green is the way to go. It gives the fans what they want and it also gives the teams a better opportunity to prepare for their end of race strategy.”
The rule came under scrutiny Saturday night, when the exhibition Bud Shootout ended under caution after a multi-car wreck with two laps left. The tweak moves the concept back towards its original rules, where there were unlimited attempts to finish a race under green.
However, Pemberton noted if the caution comes out on the white-flag lap, the rule remains the same – the race is over no matter how many GWC attempts have been used.
The change goes into effect for each of the sport’s top-three series effective this weekend.
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