DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – NASCAR announced the dates for the 2020 Xfinity Series Dash 4 Cash events on Wednesday afternoon, as well as confirmed an additional procedural change.
Next year’s Dash 4 Cash qualifier event will be held on March 21 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where the four highest-finishing series regulars in the field will become eligible to win bonus money from Comcast during the March 28 event at Texas Motor Speedway.
The winner of that race, plus the next three highest-finishing series regulars, will move on to compete for another bonus check on April 4 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
The qualification process will repeat itself over the course of the final two races in the four-week bonus program, at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway on April 25 and May 2 at Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway.
Bristol, Talladega and Dover each return to the Dash 4 Cash for the third-straight year, while Texas appears in the set for the first time since the second year of the program in 2010.
Texas replaces Richmond (Va.) Raceway in the Triple Truck Challenge, as the three-quarter-mile oval moves its spring date from an Xfinity Series race to a Gander Trucks event.
“The 2020 schedule is a little different, so that definitely had us going back and looking,” said Meghan Miley, NASCAR senior director of Racing Operations. “The goal of it when looking at what events we’re going to do, we want them to be consecutive because that just keeps the momentum going for the program. Additionally, three of the four markets are key for Comcast, with the program wrapping up in their back yard.”
This year’s Dash 4 Cash bonus payouts were $100,000 each. The 2020 payouts for the program will be announced at a later date.
In addition, NASCAR will trim the Xfinity Series field size from 38 to 36 starting next year, further reducing that division’s grid from the 40-car field it was just two years ago.
“This year, we looked at what we did going into the 2019 season, seeing how it worked and then decided that we could probably go a little further,” Miley told NASCAR.com. “The goal is that we take the prize money for those positions and put it back into the teams. All of it goes back into the teams, and you’re really taking care of the teams that are reinvesting in the sport and racing full time.
“It’s wanting to have the most competitive teams racing in those series to make them the best series they can be, and I think this is a good opportunity to strengthen the field and support those teams that are reinvesting back in the sport.”
Thirty-one positions in the Xfinity Series field will be set on qualifying speed, with four owner point provisionals and one past champion’s provisional also reserved as well.
The prize money from the 37th- and 38th- place positions will be redistributed throughout the rest of the starting field.