Kyle Petty hot take on future NASCAR timed events might not sit well with fans

This past Sunday’s Chicago Street Race was hampered by a near two-hour red flag delay due to rain, forcing NASCAR to make a big decision.

Unlikely to complete the full 75 laps due to limited lighting in the downtown area, NASCAR implemented a running clock with a cutoff time of 8:20 p.m. CT. NBC Sports analyst Kyle Petty said that NASCAR did a “great job” running a timed event and believes the sanctioning body laid the foundation to run timed events in the future.

Petty gave his proposal for how it would work:

“NASCAR did a great job of running a timed event,” Petty said Tuesday. “They were very clear with the crews, very clear with the fans, very clear with TV. This is when it’s gonna end. And when we run out of time guess what, white flag, checkered flag, end of the race. What that shows is in the future, NASCAR can run timed events. Think about it; 30-minute pre-race, 30-minute post-race, two-hour race in the middle, three-hour TV package anywhere we wanna put it. Great nod to the future for NASCAR.”

Elton Sawyer explains NASCAR decision to make timed ending for Chicago Street Race

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition, said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Tuesday that language was put into the rulebook this past offseason to decide on a pre-determined time to finish races at tracks that don’t have lights.

“We put language in the rulebook in the offseason that gave us the ability for facilities like Chicago. Or this week at Pocono or Indy or Michigan that doesn’t have lights to look at sunset. And we can decide on a pre-determined time, which is what we did,” Sawyer said.

NASCAR informed teams after the end of Stage 1 that the race would have a strict cutoff time. Sawyer said the decision to wait until then to announce it came down to having the opportunity to see how the day unfolded.

“And then we communicated that to the industry. The teams that we would give them that time prior to starting the second stage,” Sawyer said. “So, at the end of the first stage, we make an announcement that we will race till X. All of that timeline and the reason we don’t do that prior to the race starting or even at 12:00 or Sunday morning was to give us all the opportunity to look at how the day unfolds, give us the longest runway possible to make the best decision to get the most laps completed that we could if we were gonna run into a delay and then again, once we got to the end of the first stage, it was pretty evident to us it was going to be difficult to get to Lap 75.

“Looking at the night before at about an 8:30 sunset. We felt like we were comfortable and right on the edge with still having enough sunlight to go to 8:20. And that’s where we landed on it. Again, that rule will be in effect again this weekend at Pocono.”