The NASCAR experiment that could teach F1 a lesson

Ah, reversed grids. They're like a bad smell that just won't go away, aren't they? Always lingering in the background, occasionally wafting forwards until enough people have complained that someone cracks out the air freshener to grant some brief respite, until the cycle begins anew.

The latest attempts to introduce reversed grids in Formula 1 for the second races at the Austrian and British double-headers were vetoed by Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. Fearing the world champions' competitive advantage would be clipped having to fight through the pack in the proposed Saturday qualifying races to set the grid for the Sunday grand prix, Wolff put the stoppers on F1's second push at reversed grids - following the abandonment of a similar attempt last year that failed to meet with universal approval in the paddock.

Wolff labelled the introduction of reversed grids "a gimmick" and put forward the well-trodden line that "F1 is a meritocracy - best man in best machine wins". But then again, he would say that.

All F1 teams, not least the outfit that has won 90 of the last 122 grands prix and scored an average of 705 points in the constructors' championship over the last six seasons, are control freaks. To the small army of data engineers, race strategists and computer boffins, the very thought of squandering any control over such a crucial session as qualifying of a race weekend is anathema.

So honed are the programmes for qualifying that the introduction of something with the potential for so much chaos and unpredictability meant that, for a team which relies on taking as much risk as possible out of its operations, the idea was always a non-starter.

But while F1 continues to plod on with its rules-by-committee malarkey, over the pond, NASCAR took the bold, and not entirely unreasonable steps of doing something different for fans, shortly after announcing it would be the first major sports championship to resume its season following the COVID-19 forced hiatus.

With a normal Cup season constituting 36 rounds from February to November with occasional weekends 'off', it can sometimes get a tad stale for drivers and teams to turn up and effectively drive the same race 36 times every year. To offer something different, NASCAR opted to make the second leg of the Darlington and Charlotte Cup Series double-headers reversed grid encounters - with the top 20 finishers from the first race flipped for the shorter distance, mid-week second offerings.

Crucially though, those who did not finish the first race, or - as in the case of Jimmie Johnson in the 600-miler at Charlotte - were disqualified after failing post-race scrutineering, were forced to start the reversed grid race behind those who did finish. This therefore alleviated another of Wolff's fears that: "[If] you decide to DNF the car, that will be the car that starts from pole for the quali race." It acts as a very simple check against any team who has had a shocker and entertains thoughts of parking it, in the hope of gaining an advantage for the following week.

Given the strong debate, NASCAR's recent dipping of its toes in the reversed grids water gives some prime data to chew over to see if there is any merit to reversing a grid to improve racing. For the record, reversed grids are of course de rigour in various junior formulas around the world, but Autosport was interested in how a top-level championship introducing them for the first time fared, hence why data from championships such as Formula 2 and Formula 3 was not used.

Along with Darlington and Charlotte (chosen for their proximity to the NASCAR hub in the North Carolina state capital of Charlotte as the series took the first tentative steps back following the pandemic), Pocono was always planned to be a double-header and the invert of the top 20 there was common knowledge since the original 2020 calendar was released last year.

At Darlington, Ryan Preece (JTG Daugherty) started from pole on the Wednesday night after finishing 20th on the Sunday, with Ty Dillon (Germain Racing) and 2018 Cup champion Joey Logano (Team Penske) filling in behind.

Across the three races, the top 20 runners at the end of the first stage gained an average 3.7 positions, with Kevin Harvick the big winner - on average gaining 10.6 spots in each race

In the 60-lap stage one - with a total of 14 caution period laps, including a competition caution - the top 20 finishers had a position change total of 69 compared to their race starting position, giving an average of 3.45 per driver. Johnson, starting 37th after posting a DNF following his crash from the lead in the first race, was the biggest mover and made up 18 places to 19th in his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro, with Richard Childress Racing's Austin Dillon the big loser, dropping 10 spots to 20th.

A week later at Charlotte (below), William Byron and Alex Bowman headed a Hendrick 1-2 on the grid, the 40 green flag laps featuring a total of 99 position changes among the top 20 stage finishers. This gives a stage one average position change of 4.95, helped by Bubba Wallace making up 24 places and Johnson gaining 23 from the back of the 40-strong pack.

The data from stage one at Pocono is more comparable with Darlington than Charlotte, with 58 position changes among the top 20 (2.9 per driver), albeit in a significantly shorter opening segment - just 27 green flag laps in a total stage of just 30 - than the two preceding events, which featured first stages of 60 and 55 laps respectively.

Across the three races, the top 20 runners at the end of the first stage gained an average 3.7 positions. Preece, who also started on pole for the second Pocono race, was the biggest loser in the opening segments, dropping 7.3 places on average, with Stewart-Haas Racing's Kevin Harvick generally the big winner - a total of 32 positions gained in the three races giving him a race-by-race average of 10.6.

The first thing that is immediately striking when looking at the final race results at Charlotte is the relatively small leap in total positions gained between the first stage and the finish among the top 20. While there had been 99 positional changes in the first 55 laps of the race, by the time Chase Elliott had scooped his first Cup win of the year for Hendrick, that had only increased to 111 - this figure coming after an additional 153 laps encompassing both stages two and three.

That figure encompasses several big movers, including Elliott rising 18 places after finishing second in the first race, Denny Hamlin moving up 27 spots to finish second, Johnson 29 to finish 11th and Clint Bowyer putting in a good drive for SHR, up 23 places from 39th to 16th. The total of 111 positions gained or lost by the top 20 finishers works out at 5.5 made up per driver, and the story is similar for the Sunday encounter at Pocono.

Here, there was an increase from 58 places in stage one to a total of 90 by the time Hamlin took the flag. At 4.5 positions per driver, this was the lowest of the three races, although at just 140 laps long, again this race was considerably shorter than the others.

However, delving a little deeper into the data from Pocono shows that the top 10 finishers - from race-winner Hamlin to his Joe Gibbs Racing team-mate Martin Truex Jr - were on the move throughout the race, which was blighted by caution periods in stages one and two. The top 20 made up a total of 136 places, with Hamlin and Harvick each managing 18, JGR's Erik Jones gaining 35 places to charge from 38th to third, and Elliott 21 spots up to fourth, but the positions gained average is reduced by the likes of Austin Dillon (14th), Cole Custer (17th) and Ryan Newman (18th) who each dropped 12 spots, 15th place Ricky Stenhouse Jr losing 11 places and 2004 Cup champion Kurt Busch dropping 10.

The outlier in the data is the final results from Darlington. The first Cup race to feature a reverse grid, at 208 laps, was a busy one. Some 150 position changes were recorded between the top 20 at the flag- more than double from the opening segment's 69 - despite a rain shower that cut the race short by 20 laps and allowed a fortunate Hamlin to win on worn Goodyears. This equates to a final classification average gain of 7.5 per driver, with Kyle Busch (24 positions gained en-route to second), Johnson's 29 to eighth and Byron's climb from 34th to 12th the biggest movers.

However, despite the high of Darlington, across the three races in question, by the end, the calculation of the mean result is just 5.8 positions per driver, an increase of 2.1 from the stage one results.

Now of course, racing on a track that turns left, and right, is a different challenge to ovals, or indeed, triangles. It is far easier to latch onto the back of a rival and slipstream past on the next straight - or, failing that, nerf them wide through the corner - in NASCAR than it is in F1. The former's view on driving standards, is shall we say, far more laissez-faire for starters.

If Wolff was to look at this data, he'd more than likely feel vindicated in his belief that Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton could struggle for probable scant reward in a needless qualifying race, and start out of position for the main event while a rival (not that Mercedes seems to have any rivals based on Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix) could romp away for an easy win.

PLUS: The reverse experiment we will still get in Austria

But that would be a very superficial interpretation of what this data tells us. It appears there is not much going on with each driver making up about six places over the course of a race, but the key, and interesting point is which drivers have best adapted to this new form of Cup racing of turning up to race it without any practice or qualifying.

Since NASCAR resumed in mid-May, there have been 12 rounds - which amounts to one third of a regular 36-race season. Of these 12 (up to and including the visit to Indianapolis on Sunday), nine have fallen to the same three drivers: Harvick (four), Hamlin (three) and Brad Keselowski (two).

While F1 stuck rigidly to its cherished weekend structure, NASCAR offered itself to be a guinea pig and for that it must be commended, even if the results were slightly lukewarm

This trio, especially Harvick and Hamlin, have been on fire, consistently nailing the key moments - with Hamlin claiming wins in the reverse grid events at Darlington and Pocono. Harvick won the first races at both, and only claimed victory at the Brickyard on Sunday when Hamlin suffered a late tyre failure.

Harvick has a stage one average of 10.6 positions gained, climbing to 13.6 by the flag, with only a poor run at Charlotte in which he dropped from the lead to tenth by the flag bringing his number down.

Keselowski actually has lost an average of six places per stage one, although some of this can be put down to strategy calls from the #2 Penske crew, preferring to play the long game. This forward-thinking has worked well for the 2012 Cup champion, making up an average of 6.3 positions at the flag, although like Harvick, this tally is dragged down a little by an 11th place finish at Pocono when a splash 'n' dash dropped him from third late on.

But by far, Hamlin has the best story to tell. In stage one, the triple Daytona 500 champion has gained about two places a race - nothing to get excited about there. But Hamlin and crew chief Chris Gabehart have, like Keselowski, been centred on the prize at the end of the race rather than playoff or stage points - however handy they are. By the flag, Hamlin has made up an average of 20 places per race.

Pocono was the stand-out, thanks to a Gabehart strategic masterstroke of keeping the #11 out before his final stop whilst Harvick, attempting the undercut, negotiated traffic. What was that about the best man in the best machine wins, Toto?

Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel were two of the more prominent critics of F1's attempts in 2019 to adopt reverse grids after qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix, with the former suggesting: "The people that proposed that don't really know what they are talking about", while the latter was far more succinct, calling it "complete bullshit".

Contrast that with the view presented by Dale Earnhardt Jr in a recent NBC Sports video: "[The calendar reshuffles prompted by the pandemic] is a great opportunity to try a lot of things, to usher in some other unique ideas, that we wouldn't be typically willing to try in a different, or traditional environment.

"Maybe this is the time where we try shorter races, try new ideas or ideas that we've always wondered whether we could implement into our series." Open minds, and all that...

While F1 stuck rigidly to its cherished weekend structure, NASCAR offered itself to be a guinea pig and for that it must be commended, even if the results were slightly lukewarm.

Wolff is right, motorsport should be about the quickest driver in the quickest car winning the race. Maybe, he should give Hamlin a call...