By Toby Christie, NASCAR Editor
In December, NASCAR announced a new entitlement sponsor for it’s “Cup” Series — Monster Energy Drink. The aesthetics of a name change wont be the only difference this upcoming season.
Saturday evening, NASCAR released that there would be a press conference Monday at 6pm ET to discuss the format of races in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series for the upcoming year. This email, sent to every member of the press, began speculation as to what changes the sanctioning body would make to races in it’s premier series.
Would race distances finally be getting shorter? Would there be heat races?
According to a very detailed report from Motorsport.com’s Jim Utter, the changes will be vast.
The most important change listed mentions races being broken up into segments. According to Utter, the segments will usually total three in an event, but it will all depend on track and race length. In the report it says that the top-10 drivers at the conclusion of each segment will receive bonus points that will be added to the final total of points drivers receive for their finishing position in the race.
To read the rest of the reported changes click here. Of course, all of these changes are unofficial and could definitely change between this post and the press conference Monday evening.
