Dr. Diandra: How to understand COTA pit strategy

Pit strategy has always been key at road courses. But some rules changes this weekend have crew chiefs digging back in the history books to develop their COTA pit strategies.

This week’s race at COTA features:

The last of these is likely the most significant. It offers opportunities for the most clever — or most desperate — crew chiefs.

But pit strategy is also one of the more confusing areas to understand.

The Cup Series race at COTA is 68 laps. Stage 1 ends on Lap 15 and stage 2 on Lap 30. The top-10 drivers at the end of each stage earn stage points. Each stage winner earns a playoff point.

The fuel window, according to NBC’s Steve Letarte, is around 22 to 25 laps. Dividing 68 laps by the number of laps in the fuel window tells you that every car must stop at least twice. NASCAR sets stage lengths so that drivers must make at least one stop during the third stage.

I represented each lap by a box and the fuel run by a bar in the diagram below. The top boxes show the ideal race without stage breaks and the bottom with stage breaks.

To understand pit strategy, let’s examine how three drivers ran COTA last year: Race winner Ross Chastain, second-place finisher Alex Bowman and fifth-place driver Ryan Blaney.

Chastain short-pitted, meaning that he pitted while he still had plenty of gas. He pitted a total of three times during the race.

Chastain earned 40 points for winning and three points from stage two, for a total of 43 points. He also earned five all-important playoff points for the win.

Bowman started fifth and also made three pit stops.

Bowman earned 35 points for finishing second, but those eight stage points brought him up to 43 points — the same total as Chastain, but without the five playoff points.

Those