2015 Sprint All-Star Race format, changes announced

NASCAR announced on Wednesday the format for this year's Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday night, May 16. The race will consist of 110 laps - four 25-lap segments plus a fifth ten-lap segment in which only green flag laps will count, for a total of 165 miles. Also, drivers who have won the All-Star Race in any of its past runnings, rather than only in the last ten years, will be eligible even if they meet none of the other requirements for making the race, which are winning any of the 36 races of 2014 and/or any race this year between the Daytona 500 and the Kansas race on May 9, one week before the All-Star weekend. That means 2002 All-Star winner Ryan Newman and 2004 winner Matt Kenseth, both of whom went winless in the Sprint Cup series in 2014, will race in the main feature without having to get in via the last-chance Sprint Showdown on Friday night, May 15. Kenseth's last two Cup wins were non-points events at Daytona, which do not get drivers into the All-Star Race. The new rule also means that defending race champion Jamie McMurray will be in the race for the rest of his career rather than specifically through the year 2024, as the ten-year rule previously dictated. The Showdown, which will be held before the Camping World Truck Series race the same evening, will consist of two 20-lap heats. The winners of each heat plus the winner of the Sprint fan vote will transfer to the 110-lap main event on Saturday night.