NASCAR Las Vegas preview: Drivers, teams refine strategy to maximize stage points

Kevin Harvick should’ve won last weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but didn’t when he earned himself a crippling penalty for speeding on pit road during his final stop. Instead of capping a dominant afternoon that saw him lead 90 percent of the laps with a well-deserved victory, he finished ninth.

Atlanta marked the second-straight race where Harvick had a car capable of winning, yet left the track with a finish not reflective of his performance. In the season-opening Daytona 500, he said his car was the fastest he’s ever had in NASCAR’s marquee event. However, like so many drivers, he was collected in the multitude of crashes that hampered the race. He limped to a 22nd-place finish.

It would stand to reason, then, that Harvick would trail in the championship standings. After all, his best result is a ninth, whereas Kurt Busch, Joey Logano and Kasey Kahne each scored top-10 finishes in the first two races. But that trio, in fact, trails Harvick, who holds a four-point advantage over Busch, the Daytona 500 winner, heading into Sunday’s Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (3:45 p.m. ET, FOX).

That Harvick is atop the standings despite only a single top 10 finish is a testament to the new way NASCAR is distributing points this season. Under the revised system, races are sliced into three parts, and drivers who finish 10th or better in the first two stages are awarded bonus points, which are then tacked onto the points accumulated for their overall finish at the third segment’s conclusion.

Drivers are now rewarded for their performance throughout a race’s entirety and not just where they placed when the checkered flag waves. And no one has been better at accruing bonus points than Harvick, whose three stage wins and second-place finish in the first Daytona 500 stage has earned him 39 additional points. By just that tally alone, the Stewart-Haas Racing driver would rank 16th in the standings without even taking into account where he finished at Daytona and Atlanta.

The impetus behind the revised race format was to incentivize drivers to give max effort from the green flag to the checkered flag, which in turn would improve the quality of the on-track product and hopefully combat the television ratings.

“It’s doing everything that the point system was meant to do and that’s to make everybody run hard and up front and gain points,” Busch said.

Whether this has produced the desired effect as Busch suggests is inconclusive through two races -- a small sample size made all the smaller because it includes a restrictor-plate race vastly dissimilar from the majority of the events on the Monster Energy Cup Series schedule.

But what’s not open to conjecture is that drivers and teams are more mindful of where they run during the early and middle portions of a race, and in some instances have specifically devised strategy to help obtain positions on the track and the accompanying points.

“That’s what these stages were meant to do was create the pit strategy movement and to create the, ‘Let’s gain points early in the race and it won’t be so bad at the end if we can’t quite finish as strong at the end,’” Busch said. “But, for me, I’m old school. I’m about going for the trophy. I want to stand there in victory lane and go, ‘Yep, I got the trophy even if I got less points than the guy that finished third.’”

On Sunday, the third race of the season should provide a barometer of what impact the segmented format will have going forward. Like so many tracks on the schedule, the 1.5-mile Las Vegas oval is classified as an intermediate speedway where races tend to feature prolonged stretches of green flag racing and without excessive tire wear, which allows teams to employ various strategies -- be it taking no tires, two tires or four tires -- when pitting.

Teams will be presented with similar conditions frequently throughout the course of the season, thereby allowing what’s learned Sunday to be applicable elsewhere.

“Looking at this weekend where tire wear perhaps won’t be nearly as significant as it was last week, I think you’re gonna see more strategy cards played,” said Brad Keselowski, the Las Vegas pole-sitter. “I think you’re gonna see the field mixed up a little bit more, and I think you’re gonna see guys you haven’t seen in a little while up towards the front at different points and times during the races. I think that makes it fun and interesting for all of us.”

What lengths teams will go to in the pursuit of bonus points is yet to be determined. But what’s indisputable is that, as Harvick has demonstrated thus far, where you finish in the first and second segment can be as important as where you finish at the end of a race.

“Our approach is to do whatever we have to do to win the stage,” Keselowski said.

A mentality is manifesting itself in how teams approach qualifying, Keselowski said. The realization that by starting near the front situates a driver in a more advantageous position to score points in the first stage, has upped the importance on posting a fast lap in time trials.

“Qualifying has always mattered, but now it matters more than ever because it gives you a prime opportunity to win that first stage and collect those points both for the season and for the playoffs,” Keselowski said. “I think it’s critical. It makes us put more emphasis on it.”

“Winning all three stages is a max points day and with this format, you can earn more points than ever in a race and distance yourself more than ever from your competition, and that’s certainly what we’re looking to try to accomplish.”