NASCAR Cup Series

Fans set race segments for Unlimited

Published Feb. 14, 2013 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

NASCAR fans have spoken.

Fans are voting on a series of competition formats for the season-opening non-points NASCAR Sprint Unlimited (Saturday, 8 p.m. ET on FOX). The first vote? The length of the race’s segments.

Voting for that segment ended just before midnight Wednesday, and officials have announced that the segments will be set at laps of 30, 25 and 20.

The winning combination for the segment lengths received 55 percent of the votes, while the option for laps of 40-20-15 finished second with 23 percent followed by the laps of 35-30-10, which had 22 percent of the votes.

“By giving the fans the power to decide the length of the three segments in the Sprint Unlimited, we feel there will be an unprecedented buzz surrounding the event,” said Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vice president of competition. “The 30-25-20-lap format the fans voted for will create three distinctly different segments that will keep fans enthralled throughout the race.”

Fans still have an opportunity to vote on two other competition elements during Saturday night’s race. Voting for the type of pit stop each team must make in the first segment ends at the green flag while voting for the number of cars that will be eliminated after the 25-lap second segment ends when that segment begins.

Votes for the remaining two categories can be cast on NASCAR’s new official mobile app — NASCAR Mobile ’13 — or at NASCAR.com/SprintUnlimited. All votes made through the NASCAR Mobile ’13 app will count twice.