Drivers gripe about tire compounds, bump-and-runs, and stage cautions all the time, but it’s rare for one to publicly agree that the sport’s own race distances are part of the problem. Kyle Larson did exactly that this week, and he picked one of the worst possible venues to do it.
The spark came from outside NASCAR entirely. Six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon was asked about race distance during the Music City Grand Prix weekend at Nashville Superspeedway on July 19, an event that stretched past 400 miles, the first IndyCar race to do so outside the Indianapolis 500 since Pocono in 2019. Asked whether IndyCar should add more mileage to its own races, Dixon pivoted straight to the other side of the paddock: “I find it really hard to watch a Cup race these days. It allows for a nap, so maybe that’s good. I don’t know.”
NASCAR’s broadcast side did not let that slide. Danielle Trotta, a pit reporter across both Prime and TNT’s Cup Series coverage, fired back on social media, telling Dixon not to let the door hit him on the way out and adding that people could talk once they started watching his races outside the month of May. It’s the kind of interseries sniping that flares up every couple of years and is usually forgotten within a news cycle. This time it had unusually good timing.
Days later, the NASCAR Cup Series rolled into the exact same city Dixon has built his career around. The 30th running of the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway gave a reporter in the media center an obvious follow-up question, and Larson, who has attempted the Indy 500/Coca-Cola 600 double and drives the No. 5 for Hendrick Motorsports, didn’t dodge it.
“Well, I’ll start off by saying yes, I agree that a lot of our Cup races are too long,” Larson said. “I just think that’s the way the world has kind of gone and how people consume sports. I definitely think our races are too long. I think three hours is too long. So yeah. But as far as a nap, I don’t know. So, it doesn’t really bother me, but I agree with what he was saying.”
Larson isn’t wrong about the math. The Cup Series is averaging roughly three hours and fifteen minutes per race this season, and that number crept up gradually rather than by accident. Stage racing, introduced in 2017, splits every race into two competition breaks before the final green-flag run, and each stage ending produces a caution, a round of pit stops, and a restart. That’s good for manufactured drama and stage points that feed directly into the playoff standings, but it also means a 400-mile race on a mile-and-a-half oval no longer runs at a continuous green-flag pace. Add in commercial breaks built around a network television deal, and the run time stretches well past what the raw mileage suggests.
This isn’t unfamiliar territory for NASCAR, either. Several current 400-mile points races used to run 500 miles, and events at tracks like Rockingham and the old North Wilkesboro were trimmed or dropped over the decades partly because a tighter show tested better with television audiences. The sanctioning body already knows how to build a short, focused broadcast window when it wants one: the Clash exhibition race and the All-Star Race are both built as sub-two-hour events with no stage points on the line. What NASCAR hasn’t done is apply that same instinct to the 36-race points schedule that actually decides a championship.
Shortening points races isn’t as simple as trimming laps off the schedule sheet, though. Fuel windows, tire allotments, and pit strategy are all built around current race distances, and crew chiefs already game out stage breaks to the lap. Cut the distance and teams have to rework strategy calls that took years to dial in, while NASCAR’s broadcast partners would have to rework ad inventory sold against a specific run time. That’s the unglamorous reason races rarely get shorter even when drivers, fans, and now a rival series champion are all saying the same thing out loud.
Larson’s own Sunday didn’t even make it to the part of the race where the “too long” complaint usually kicks in. His day ended early in Stage 1 after a tire went down and sent him spinning, well before the point in the broadcast where fans start checking the fuel window. Corey Heim went on to hold off Christopher Bell and Joey Logano for his second Cup win of the season, and the weekend also closed out the first-ever In-Season Challenge bracket, with Ryan Blaney and Todd Gilliland racing for a $1 million prize as the field heads into the final four races before the Chase.
None of that resolves the actual debate. NASCAR has plenty of levers to pull if it wants a tighter show: shorter stages, fewer commercial breaks, a return to shorter distances at some ovals, but every option comes with a trade-off the sport has been unwilling to make for years. Larson didn’t start a fight by agreeing with Dixon. He just said, in the media center, what a lot of the garage already mutters under its breath after lap 150.
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