“o.itemList.length” “this.config.text.ariaShown”
“This.config.text.ariaFermé”
The 2021 schedule originally scheduled for release in April, however, the COVID-19 pandemic and the two-month close of the sport put the plans on hold as NASCAR aimed at the end of the 2020 season.
NASCAR has achieved this purpose effectively, as its 3 national series, Cup, Xfinity and Trucks, are expected to finish their respective seasons with championship races on the first weekend of November.
The pandemic, however, persists, its effects varying from state to state, creating even more challenges.
The 2021 Cup schedule is expected to come with significant adjustments, either in the types of races scheduled and on the tracks on which they will be held.
In a Zoom media call Tuesday, NASCAR President Steve Phelps was unable to give a timeline on when the 2021 calendar would end and said it could end up being released in “parts.”
“There are many other variables and points that want to move on to what our 2021 calendar is going on to look like,” he said.”Do we want to keep looking for new potential sites? The answer is yes.to take a look at the possible shape changes?Do we want to continue with the screens one day or another?
“This is all we want to weigh with all the stakeholders in the induscheck: the tracks themselves, our streaming components and the content they would lose as a component of that, the groups and what it seems to see for them.difficult times, so all those things are things that we take into consideration.
Some adjustments have already been announced.
Busch Clash’s 43rd preseason race will take place at Daytona International Speedway for the first time on Tuesday, February 9 at night, with the opening of the Daytona 500 Cup classic season on Sunday 14.
In June, NASCAR and Dover Motorsports Inc., owner of Dover (Del.) International Speedway, announced that they will move one of their existing Cup races to Dover to the Nashville Superspeedway in 2021, which he will take over next June.
The 1.33-mile concrete runway built in 2001 through DMI and hosted sanctioned events through NASCAR and IndyCar Series from 2001 to 2011.
Phelps said NASCAR is moving forward with the creation of its 2021 schedule to incorporate emergency plans assuming that the pandemic could continue at race sites and attendance in 2021.
“I am cautiously confident that many of the goals we would have had in a pre-COVID world will have them in our 2021 season,” Phelps said.
“But, again, there are many moving parts, and we have to put them on the ground before we can talk about what it looks like (the calendar).”
Although the midweek races are “viable” in the future, Phelps said, the possibility of them appearing in the 2021 calfinishar is “at the end of the lower probability.”
After a successful start to upgrade Watkins Glen (NY) International this season, Phelps said it was imaginable a permanent place on the Daytona Road Course calendar, but that it deserved to be an additional race at Daytona, without replacing its two oval tracks.
Phelps stated that the pit and garage spaces would continue to be prohibited for fans, some team members, sponsor visitors and the media until a COVID-19 vaccine shown, or any other similar effective treatment, is widely available.