NASCAR revealed its qualifying and practice procedures for the 2025 national series seasons on Dec. 12.
The changes include more practice time, with group practices in the series expanding from 20 to 25 minutes.
Additionally, all qualifying sessions except those on superspeedways will be one-round efforts, with two laps at short tracks and one at larger, non-superspeedway circuits. Road courses will feature one session divided into two groups.
NASCAR is bringing back row determination for the starting lineup being based by qualifying speed rather than by group, as a result of the return to one session for all drivers.
At superspeedways, it will retain a final round for the 10 fastest qualifiers from the first session,
“I think it’s going to be welcomed by the industry,” Brad Moran, Cup director, said, per NASCAR.com. “We’ve gotten a lot of feedback throughout the year, and we made a couple of adjustments through the year, and we really wanted to take a whole fresh look at it. A lot of this came into play back in COVID, when we tightened things up, so we’re kind of going back a little to what we used to do again. We’re going to have a little more practice, which is obviously better for the fans and the partners.”
Superspeedway races will remain without practice sessions in 2025, except for a 50-minute round before Daytona 500 qualifying.
Kevin Rutherford is the executive editor of Frontstretch, a position he gained in 2025 after being the managing editor since 2015, and serving on the editing staff since 2013.
At his day job, he's a journalist covering music and rock charts at Billboard. He lives in New York City, but his heart is in Ohio -- you know, like that Hawthorne Heights song.