NASCAR issued a notice on Thursday evening that the sanctioning body will adjust the weekend schedule for the NASCAR Cup Series at Circuit of the Americas in a few weeks.
NASCAR will add a 50-minute practice session to the schedule on Friday, March 24th, which will run from 2:05 PM ET to 2:55 PM ET. The additional practice session was added to give teams and drivers extra time to adjust to the updated aerodynamic package designed for use at short tracks and road courses.
This weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Phoenix Raceway will be the first race that will feature the new lower downforce package, which is expected to reduce downforce on the NASCAR Cup Series cars by roughly 30 to 40%.
The sanctioning body also stated that beginning with COTA, all road course races will utilize the ‘choose rule’ where drivers can select which lane they would prefer to restart in before heading back to the green flag from a caution period. NASCAR says the decision to add the choose rule to road course events came, “following discussions with the industry.”
With the addition of road courses, the choose rule has now officially been adapted for every NASCAR race track on the schedule.
