Some of its race dates were originally introduced during the pandemic, specifically the spring meeting at Darlington for all three top series (which actually flipped lineages as Darlington moved the September race lineage back to the spring, and vice versa), and the Talladega playoff race for the Xfinity Series. Also, NASCAR kept pandemic restrictions in place by announcing only eight weekends would feature a full slate of practice and qualifying, which were the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600, the five weekends on new circuits or changed layouts (the March Bristol meeting, on dirt, Austin, Nashville, Road America, Indianapolis on the road course), and the November Phoenix championship round. All other meetings would use the pandemic format of no practice or qualifying with grids set by the competition formula implemented starting with the first August Daytona round.