NASCAR has changed almost everything that they’ve done in order to being able to resume their season in the middle of a global pandemic. From one-day shows, to weeknight races, to two events at the same race track in a span of a couple of days, to events with no fans, to PPE, to so much other stuff, the NASCAR that we knew of this past March is no more.

Now, we get another change up — a doubleheader weekend.

For the first time in likely decades, if ever done at all, the Cup Series will race at the same track twice in as many days. Now, instead of having two race weekends spread apart by two months, NASCAR will be back again 24 hours later.

While both races at the Pocono Raceway this weekend will take place behind closed doors, it will still be met with high expectations.

Despite this, having both races this weekend may be confusing to some. A lot of questions have been asked. So, let’s differentiate between the two.

It’s the same drivers both days on the same race track. One race (Sunday) is longer than the other (Saturday). More than likely, the same cars will be used in both races too. If they’re not, a penalty will incur.

That may make some think that this is the same race twice. I get that and wondered that myself, but after looking deeper into it, I caution that it may not be that case after all.

Yes, you have a group of usual suspects that are going to be the ones to beat. The same select group typically have been great at Pocono in the past and are nearly unstoppable on the season as well. But, Pocono also has a tendency to reward either first time winners or ending winless droughts too.

This spring race has been produced some surprise winners. In 2014, Dale Earnhardt Jr. earned his first Cup win in two years. Same for the next year in 2015 with Martin Truex Jr. In 2016, Kurt Busch ended his 35 race winless streak in the June Pocono race while Chris Buescher earned his first and only Cup win in the rain shortened August race. In 2017, Ryan Blaney earned his first career win in the series.

Will 2020 do it again?

Kyle Busch is a prime candidate to end a winless drought. He has three wins in his last six Pocono starts and hasn’t won since last year’s season finale at Homestead.

Clint Bowyer (five top 11’s in his last six ties) could get his first win since June 2018.

What about a third first time winner? William Byron has three top 10 finishes in four starts at Pocono.

What about a first time Pocono winner?

Kevin Harvick won for the first time in 39 starts on Saturday. Maybe Erik Jones fits that mold. He’s won twice in his Cup career, neither being at Pocono though. Jones, has four top five finishes and five top 10’s in seven Pocono starts.

But, the race on Saturday was 25 miles shorter in length in comparison to the one on Sunday, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Saturday saw the top cars on the season start up front. Sunday, will be an invert.

“Getting back to the front will be difficult,” said Denny Hamlin on Friday in terms of having a good finish on Saturday but bad starting spot then on Sunday. “I think without a doubt it will be difficult for somebody to win both races simply because that track is a little bit harder to pass at unless you have a superb, a dominant car over the field. Even if you have that, it’s going to be difficult to really pass guys simply because the big aero that you have there when you’re behind someone. If you get out of there with a couple top-fives, it’s a good weekend.”

Why is that key?

Well five of the last six Pocono winners have come from a top 10 starting spot. In fact, since 2014, 11 of the 13 Cup Series races on the Tricky Triangle have been won from a top 10 starting spot.

With the fast cars coming from mid pack on back on Sunday, do they have enough time to make up that many spots on a track notorious for being difficult to pass on?

“It was incredibly difficult to pass,” Brad Keselowski said of Saturday’s race. “I caught cars that I was a second faster than and then I just couldn’t pass. It was a big track position day. I think you saw that with the guys that started up front all finished up front. We tried to make some moves to make some passes and probably caught ourselves some spots. If we rode around all day we would have maybe got two or three more spots out of it.”

Joey Logano says that the lack of practice and the key to having two different races will be key too.

“I kind of in a way I look at Darlington earlier when we came back from our little break is almost a doubleheader because we raced and then a couple days later we come back, and it was a completely different race,” the Team Penske driver said. “Yes, the length and the stages and all that were different as well, but if you looked at who the dominant car was that no one can keep up with, and then we come back there a few days later and everyone has changed their cars and that car that was the dominant car was still good, but not nowhere’s near as strong as he was, so I would expect the same thing at Pocono without practice, and that’s what we’ve seen all year long so far since we’ve come back without practices.

“Some teams hit it and some teams completely miss it and you can’t really fix your car the way you want to until the race is over, and you can’t really do much about it once the race is over.

“Well, this is our opportunity to work on our car and get better the next day.  So it’s gonna be a lot of work, I think, overnight. When we’re done racing Saturday, we’ll be far from done for that day. We’re gonna be continuing to try to find our weaknesses, look at areas to improve our car and give it another shot the next day.

“So it’s just gonna be a hectic couple days for sure with a lot on the line, but I will say this – I’ve said it 100 times since we announced the doubleheader at Pocono.  I know after every race I always say, ‘Dang it, I wish I could do that again.  I would do this and this and this different.’  And every time, every race I always say that.  Well, this time I get the chance to actually do it again and hopefully be better.”

Kyle Busch also says that even if you are good on Saturday, you’ll still have to make adjustments before Sunday’s race too. A big reason to that is more rubber will be on the 2.5-mile racing surface on Sunday compared to Saturday.

The Truck Series and Xfinity Series will both race before the Cup race starts on Sunday.

“I think you will have to make some changes to your stuff,” Busch said on the difference between the two races. “The first race, there’s only going to be the Truck Series rubber, it’s only 60 laps, so there’s just going to be a little rubber down. Then, we’re going to put a lot of rubber down with our race. Then you’ll have the Xfinity race the next day, and then you’ll have our race.

“Over the course of all those miles, I think the main similarities between the two days is going to be just that – they’re a day apart rather than a month apart. There’s a difference between the Pocono racetrack when it’s a month apart, but when it’s day one to day two, there are going to be big differences in day one to day two, so you have to take a lot of different things into account.”

His teammate Denny Hamlin agrees.

“I think if you have a good day, you’re going to just tweak your setup a little bit for the second day,” said the latest winner at Pocono, Hamlin. “You will have a bad starting position, but I think the race is plenty long enough as to where if your car is good, you’ll make up some positions.

“You can still get back up front with strategy in certain places, but I think that’s the goal. If it’s a bad day, you can essentially overhaul your car and put a new setup in and come up with new ideas and you’ll be starting up front. I think you can really bounce back. You could have flip-flop days between the two races.

“Overall, I like our chances going there and turning around to put another setup in. If the first one doesn’t work, we’ll bounce back from a bad day if we were to have one. I think we’re going to be pretty solid both days.”

Their teammate Martin Truex Jr. says it’s not just the other races running before the Cup race, it’s the different weather conditions too.

“I think tomorrow is going to be a whole different ballgame with us being the third race of the day and the sun is probably going to be out or at least they’re calling for that,” Truex Jr. said. “We expect warmer temperatures and different track conditions. That plays into things.”

So, what changes do they make to the race cars?

“Obviously springs, shocks, bars, whatever you can change, all that sort of stuff,” Busch said. “Making some adjustments. Knowing how much that track changes in that first race will give you a basis to how much you expect it to change in the second race barring any weather or the track. It’s 68 degrees one day and a 90 degrees on the other, there are going to be some big differences you’re going to want to adjust for and compensate for. Having a good notebook I think will certainly help us and our team, and Adam (Stevens, crew chief) being on board since 2015, since we started running good there. I think we could have a good idea of what to do with our M&M’S Minis Toyota.”

Crew chief Greg Ives also gave his perspective on what changes they can make too.

“You really can’t change the body configuration,” Ives, the crew chief of Alex Bowman’s No. 88 Chevrolet said. “You can to a certain point. If you come there with more of a downforce car versus – you hear that a lot- I had too much drag in the car. It’s going to be difficult, probably, to change that style.

“There’s some tweaks you can make to get some of the drag off or maybe put some downforce in. But you can’t, obviously, rebuild the whole car. From my springs, shocks, camber settings, those types of things – you definitely can adjust. By the time it’s the end of stage one, usually my engineer is over there ‘hey, we should have done this or we should have done that’.

“I’ve already got a laundry list of items going of what we need to adjust and that’s not even for a doubleheader. Fortunately for us, I feel like we’ve had good baselines, a good foundation, each week and had a lot of speed. Just have to figure out how to execute and finish some of these races. I think for Pocono, I think the strategy side of things, you’re going to see how different people adjust. They may do one strategy on Saturday and one strategy on Sunday. That’s definitely going to be interesting to see how that plays out.”

Busch, also notes that Pocono is vastly different when coming back each year. The track never stays the same, so you’ll always have to adapt to it.

Ives agrees.

“Over the course of every year, every race, the track gains character,” Ives continued. “And what I mean by character is the bumps. Pocono, for example, it started out as a pretty smooth race track. You could stiffen up your front wheel brakes and mainly work on the attitude of the car, and get that so it really doesn’t move like a go-cart.

“But as the character of the track zones in over the tunnel and gets a little bit more bumps – and now people complain about the front end washing out because you hit a bump and it pushes up the race track, and now you have to work a little more on handling – those are the things that you can’t really predict when you don’t have practice.

“Typically, when you show up, you have a couple of laps – the driver comes in and says ‘yeah, I’m hitting the splitter too hard, we need a little softer front wheel or it’s way too rigid’, and you can work on that. Once you get into the race, it’s definitely difficult to know that or even change that once those laps start clicking off. The character of the track, you’ve probably even seen it at Talladega, that new tunnel in the entry of Turn Three, you can see the cars moving around a lot more. And you didn’t know that until either watching a race – the ARCA cars or the Xfinity cars – but once we got out there, definitely saw some different things like that.”

For Saturday’s winner Kevin Harvick, he says it’s all about adapting.

“You kind of just have to adapt to where you are and how you feel and the things that are going on from your body from that standpoint,” the driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang said. “Mentally, it’s pretty easy because you break it in half.

“When one race is over, you wipe that slate clean, you analyze the things that you think were good, the things you think were bad, the things you need to do to your car, in order to make it handle better and make those adjustments and start fresh the next day.

“I like to have a routine, but my routine will basically be the same from one day to the next and it will just be a much shorter window of how you digest things and when you let them go.”

After seeing quotes from the drivers following Saturday’s race, the confident ones about their cars are Harvick, Hamlin and Keselowski. The ones just needing slight adjustments are both Busch brothers, Truex and Christopher Bell.