Phase 1 of NASCAR’s start up went off without a hitch. Four races, four different race winners from four different teams. We saw NASCAR’s most popular driver get crashed out by NASCAR’s villian while battling for a win on a rain delayed weeknight race. Six days later, the popular kid on the block, went down to race in the Truck Series and beat that villain for a $100k bounty. Ryan Newman returned for the first time since his frightening Daytona 500 crash. So did Matt Kenseth. A fox was found on a race track, an emotional winner was found in the Xfinity Series. I mean, this start could have been scripted any better.

The first major sport to resume activity got back going on May 17 at the Darlington Raceway. Over 6-million viewers tuned in to see Kevin Harvick earn his 50th career NASCAR Cup Series victory. That in turn was a victory for the sport too. Nothing else on TV that weekend was within a million people watching it. Millions of eyes were on them, and only them, looking at their sport as a Guinea pig for holding a live sporting event during the midst of a global pandemic.

They passed with flying colors.

It wasn’t easy though. Adjustments had to be made in order for NASCAR to return. The first batch out of a 70 day hiatus included all races to be held behind closed doors. No practice would take place for any of the four races either. Three of the four races didn’t even have any qualifying. We’d have limits on team personnel and media. One-day shows would incur with health screening prior to entry for anyone going inside of the track. Also, weeknight events would happen, with both seeing the starting lineup get an invert from the top 20 positions from the race prior.

Nothing that we saw the last time out at Phoenix in March would really happen in May. No victory lane celebrations, no crowds, nothing.

Now that this was all said and done and we move into Phase 2 of the revised schedule this weekend, it’s safe to say NASCAR hit this out of the park. Many of these changes, well they could be around for the future as well. That’s how well this went.

No known coronavirus cases were found. All members of NASCAR coming to and from the tracks were screened and no one failed the assessment. With three of the four Cup races run being made from scratch and not having been on the schedule before, I’d say NASCAR did a phenomenal job of putting this together.

“NASCAR in my opinion has hit gold with this format, Brad Keselowski said on Thursday night following the Alsco 500 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. “The limited practice, show up and race and the time window benefits both east and west coast. No qualifying, inversion is really good because it mixes the field up and creates some good storylines there.”

This praise comes almost two weeks after Keselowski said that NASCAR’s return and how smooth it went was a “Christmas Miracle.”

He’s right too. I mean, Thursday’s race was half the distance of Sunday’s, had an invert when Sunday’s had qualifying, and the shorter race was infinitely more action packed than 600 miles worth this past weekend.

Most drivers agree with this. Almost all of them have said that they’d rather limit practice and eliminate qualifying and just get straight to racing.

“I just like to race, I like to be in the race car,” Stenhouse said in a media teleconference Friday. “Practice and qualifying doesn’t do it for me as much as getting out and competing in the race, as (opposed to being) in the car on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

“Really there’s nothing like going out and racing. I enjoy racing as much as possible.”

Denny Hamlin agreed, saying the weeknight races are similar in lengths to stick and ball sports.

“I mean, I think it’s right around the length of an NBA or football game, somewhere in that range,” Hamlin said who’s earned a top two finish in both weeknight races run. “NBA is about two and a half hours, football is three plus.  I mean, I think it’s good.  Obviously we’re really getting stung by the weather right now.  All these races have got delays and stoppages in the middle of it, so it makes it really, really tough.  It makes the nights and days really long.  But certainly you can look back on my quotes from two years ago; heck with tradition; you’ve got to advance with the times.  I think that keeping people’s attention span for three hours is a good thing.  It’s a very good thing.  These cars are different now than what they used to be.  It used to be a battle of machine, you’re going to wear out your tires and your brakes and whatnot.  They just don’t wear out anymore, so essentially it just becomes a long race after that.

“I certainly like the change, and on a weeknight time slot that we have, it’s got to be tightened up anyway, so I think this was a good taste of it, and they’ll gather the data and figure out what’s best for them in the future.  Maybe it’s keeping them long, I’m not sure.  Let the people that know a lot more about it speak on it.”

NASCARs President Steve Phelps spoke earlier this week about how some of these changes may become part of the new norm for the future too.

“There are some things that we’ll look at both this year and the offseason,” said Phelps on Tuesday. “Typically, we practice three times. Do we need to practice three times? I don’t know. That is something we, as an industry, will determine.

“Having cars on racetracks, is that something that’s important with respect to a practice? Or isn’t it? Or frankly, do you have a better show when you don’t practice? And those are some of the things we need to look at.”

Phelps cautioned though that he didn’t want to over saturate the schedule with a bunch of weeknight races, but did leave the door open for more in the future still.

“Do I think we’ll have some one-day shows where you come in and race on a Wednesday night? Yeah, I think we’ll probably see some of that moving forward.”

While I think the TV ratings could have been better for the first weeknight race as well as the Coca-Cola 600, I feel like weather played a factor in them and didn’t really give a fair assessment. Unfortunately, mother nature didn’t cooperate much with this revision but NASCAR was able to adapt and still get seven races in if you include the Xfinity and Truck Series races in a week in-a-half.

Now, we head to Bristol (Tenn)  Motor Speedway next to start Phase 2. NASCAR has five Cup races coming up next with Bristol (May 31), Atlanta (June 7), Martinsville (June 10), Homestead (June 14) and Talladega (June 21) on tap.

The schedule should start to spread out a bit now. We have one weeknight race scheduled in this next phase and no return trips to tracks. Even the third phase is taking shape and I don’t see a lot of midweek races then either.

The writing is on the wall for NASCAR to have to venture back outside of the southeast during this next phase whenever it is announced. They would have visited almost every track down there during this process. Plus, the race weekend at the Pocono Raceway at the end of June appears to have been given the green light to run without race fans anyways. That means the first race weekend of the third phase would be two races on the 2.5-mile Pennsylvania race track. From there, Indianapolis is up and all signs are pointing to the Brickyard 400 weekend not only being able to be ran, but also doing so in front of race fans too.

More: What Next Phase Of NASCAR’s Scheduling May Look Like

“As quickly as we can get back to racing with fans, we’ll do that,” said Phelps continued. “But it needs to be safe. We need to make sure our fans are safe and feel safe to come back. There will be protocols put in place that will be different than they were before this pandemic.”

That would take care of three races in two weekends. If they want to keep the weeknight theme, they could keep Kentucky Speedway in July, but move it up from a Saturday night to a Wednesday night affair since the 1.5-mile track is just a couple of hours south of Indianapolis. While the teams are up here, why not run both within a few days of each other. Plus, the Indy and Pocono cars will likely be the same and the backup cars could be the Kentucky car.

So far, NASCAR is the model for getting things resuming again.