"Do away with stage points" - 86-year-old Richard Petty urges NASCAR for true racing merit

NASCAR legend Richard Petty has urged the sport to bring a change in the points system so that the competition remains more fair.

In 2017, NASCAR introduced the stage wins concept for the races. Every single race is divided into three stages; the first two make up for 25% of a race (separately) and the final stage is 50% of the total race length. Each driver winning a stage of the race is awarded bonus points, which can sometimes affect the main race-winning driver. A stage winner is given 10 bonus points, and the second-placed driver gets 9 points, and so on.

Sometimes the driver who wins the race is awarded fewer points because of the bonus awarded to the stage-winning drivers. NASCAR legend Richard Petty feels that this system is "not right" and needs to be done away with, as he said on his X account:

"I think they ought to do away with stage points altogether myself. Sometimes, you have a guy running 4th or 5th, gets more points than the guy that wins the race and that’s not right."

He then gave examples of other sports and explained why NASCAR needs to implement the same.

"You know any other sport no matter how much you lead the ball game, it’s who winds up with the most points when it’s over and I think NASCAR needs to do the same thing."

---

Richard Petty reminisces about his tire management techniques in the early years

Tire management is an essential technique in any motorsport, and so is the case with NASCAR as it became quite apparent during the race earlier in Bristol. Most of the drivers suffered severe grip issues on the 0.5-mile circuit throughout the length of the race.

The track is historically related to the sport. "The King" Richard Petty won there three times himself. As he remembered the time he spent racing, he stated that he was unsure if he was good at tire management.

However, one of Richard Petty's techniques was to not push hard on the new tires and wait for the time when others were done using up theirs and then push through the field. He said in a video uploaded on his YouTube channel:

"I don't know if I was good at tire management or not, but I do know that a lot of times you put brand new tires and the cars would run quicker. So a lot of times we didn't run as hard as some of the rest of the people did. So that we didn't wear the new off the tires."

"We done everything we could to try to do tire management and that was a different groove on the racetrack or just maintaining your speed early and let the guys wear their tires out before you start racing with them."

Denny Hamlin won the race at Bristol this year after facing quite a challenge with the tires like other drivers, as mentioned earlier. He later finished in 14th place at COTA during the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix.