Sunday’s race at the Talladega Superspeedway once again saw teams engage in fuel saving. With not many fans and drivers being fans of racing at half throttle in a bid to reduce the number of pit stops, the same line of criticism that was found after the 2024 Daytona 500 practice continued in Dega. Amidst the flurry of negative opinions, RFK Racing co-owner Brad Keselowski offered a positive take.
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After finishing his 188 laps in 2nd place, Keselowski spoke to Frontstretch about the race and expressed that he expected such extreme fuel conservation. He, however, noted, “Start of the race there was a lot of fuel conserve, in the middle race there was fuel conserve, at the end there was no fuel conserve. We ran hard.”
He continued that the racing was good on the day and that he didn’t know if anything “should” be done about the fuel-saving strategy. “I thought there was good racing. There was all kinds of racing today. We saw it single out to the wall, we saw double, triple… We saw different strategies on pit road. It was a really interesting race,” he concluded.
The talks around fuel-conservation raise after Sunday’s Talladega race
The first two stages in Sunday’s race were caution-free. One of the reasons for this unusualness in Talladega was drivers not utilizing their maximum speeds on the track. Erik Jones, reportedly, said on his team radio that he was able to pass 15 drivers by just pushing down 1/8th of his throttle. With teams and drivers trying to find the most efficient way to get around the 2.66-mile track, the cars looked utterly slow.
Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher were two drivers who were highly critical of the strategy after the Daytona race earlier this year. Busch had mentioned that he felt “disgraceful” at having to do such things and Buescher noted “this was the least amount of fun” he has had in a Daytona 500. A few months later, the opposition from the grid does not seem as strong as it was then.
Drivers had responded to the strategy before Sunday’s race and expressed their stand on it. More than a few were in a position to accept the way things were and move on with it. Notably, defending champion Ryan Blaney told NBC Sports, “I think now everyone has gotten used to (fuel saving) and I think people have figured out how to counter it, so you might see an interesting deal there.”
NASCAR had promised that it would be looking into the strategy and consider if there were any restrictions that ought to be inflicted to make the racing more interesting. For now, all that’s left to do is wait on a verdict from the promotion.
