NASCAR is altering its practice format just before the 2026 Chase for the championship gets underway.
Starting at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the August 23 race weekend, practice groups will be eliminated and all teams will get 50 minutes of open practice. This will be the standard for all non-superspeedway races for the remainder of the 2026 season. Teams will be granted an additional set of tires as part of the change.
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Daytona — even with a new rules package — will not have any practice and go directly into qualifying. Talladega in the fall will also feature no practice time.
Homestead-Miami Speedway, which returns as the host of the season finale, will not be impacted as it already features a planned extended practice session for all teams.
Previously, the field was split into two groups with 25 minutes each, and there was discord over how different the track conditions were between the two groups.
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There will be no changes to the current qualifying format, or the metric that decides qualifying order/sets the grid in the event of the rainout.
NASCAR began condensing race weekends when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, and has kept on-track time severely limited in a cost-saving measure.
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