NASCAR Cup Series driver and team owner Brad Keselowski has recently admitted the need for more practice sessions ahead of races in the sport.
NASCAR had done away with the concept of practice sessions with 15-minute replacements since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in a bid to save costs for the teams during what was a financially turbulent time. However, the Roush Fenway Keselowski driver and co-owner seems to think the experiment is due its course.
Keselowski recently opened up on how teams in the highest echelon have merely relocated resources to other departments, mainly simulations ahead of race weekends, consisting of subcategories such as race simulation, aerodynamic simulation, or a multi-body physics model.
Elaborating to Sportsnaut, he said:
"I haven’t seen how we’ve saved any money getting rid of practice, not from a team perspective. Maybe there were some savings other places in the industry that I’m not aware of but there hasn’t been a significant cost savings. We’ve reallocated in a lot of way to other demands, and it’s hard for me to understand the value proposition today to not have practice."
He further added:
"We put a lot of money and time into race car simulation, whether that’s simulating the car statically with how it would perform aerodynamically in consideration to other things or whether it’s kind of a multi-body physics model, which is simulating the car going around the track. We continue to make a lot of investments. There’s undoubtedly the conclusion that we wouldn’t have had to invest so heavily had we not lost practice."
With Brad Keselowski hinting towards teams' simulation costs either exceeding or matching the expenses incurred during practice sessions weekly, the #6 Ford Mustang driver is certainly making his stance clear on whether he prefers to continue with the current format or not.
Denny Hamlin's thoughts go directly against what Brad Keselowski makes of practice sessions
Co-owner of 23XI Racing, a relatively young team to have established themselves as race winners in NASCAR, Denny Hamlin is of the opposite opinion to RFK Racing co-owner Brad Keselowski.
The current Joe Gibbs Racing driver seems to disagree with the former Cup Series champion. He told Sportsnaut:
"If we had to do full practice, pre-COVID, to 2019, there’s no way 23XI would be able to sustain that. There’s no way. What we budget for sponsorship and what we get from NASCAR, it just does not make sense."
Meanwhile, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Martinsville Speedway for the 2024 Cook Out 400. The event goes live on April 7, 2024, at 3:00 pm ET.
