The schedule: NASCAR’s top division hasn’t had three road courses in a single season since 1987, when the series visited Riverside (California) International Raceway twice and Watkins Glen once.
For the first time in the NASCAR Playoffs drivers will compete on a road course. And for the first time in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Charlotte Motor Speedway will be turned into a road course — the Charlotte road course, or the Roval as it is popularly being called.
Officials thought any deviations from the norm would keep their core fans, but as we have learned, attendance (before the pandemic) and television viewers have been on a decline for some time. While the schedule remained virtually unchanged, NASCAR added stages to races thinking that would appeal to the casual fan.
As opposed to the typical stock car racing tracks, which all but two of are exclusively oblong circles that drivers must driver nearly a hundred laps around to finish the race, road course races challenge drivers to navigate around sharp left and right turns on a winding track, often through hills or countryside.
Ross Chastain conquered the latest road circuit on the NASCAR Cup Series calendar with a thrilling Texas win at Circuit of The Americas, marking the first victory of his career. Take a look back at the all-time winningest drivers on road courses in the modern era, which began in 1972.
As of 2022, current NASCAR national-level road courses include Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Circuit of the Americas, Sonoma, Watkins Glen, the Charlotte Roval, Road America, Mid-Ohio and Mosport. Former road courses include Riverside, Topeka, Mexico City, and Montreal.
1994Indy Road Course 101: Practice, Brickyard history, Goodyear tires and more. The NASCAR Cup Series has been racing upon Indianapolis Motor Speedway's hallowed grounds since 1994.
NASCAR is an oval racing series, even if oval racing can seem bland, it is what the series is built around. Road courses do bring some great excitement and variety, but adding more could ruin that. Road courses could go from a must watch event in a season, to just another race on the schedule.
Now, look at 2020, where drivers have run 463 road course laps with another race still to go. The races are also closer together as the season goes on: Daytona (Feb.), COTA (May), Sonoma (June), Road America (July), Watkins Glen (August), Indianapolis (August).
Road courses are quite different from the basic oval racing that NASCAR drivers are accustomed to. They have right turns to make things interesting for fans and challenging for both teams and drivers. Watkins Glen and Sonoma are the two road courses in the Cup Series schedule right now.
The simple answer is because it is literally a yard of bricks. At one time, more than a century ago, the whole track used to be paved with bricks, but to know how that happened, we actually have to go farther back in IMS track history.
IndyCar is set for its fewest oval races ever in the 2021 season. Take a look at the many oval tracks the series has lost since 2010. After coronavirus pandemic restrictions led to a massively overhauled 2020 IndyCar schedule, the season featured 14 races, of which six were contested on oval tracks.
After a 27-year run, NASCAR's premier series moved to the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course this season (after the Xfinity Series did last year).
The Charlotte Motor Speedway complex encompasses nearly 2,000 acres and includes a 2.25-mile road course, a six-tenths-mile karting layout and a quarter-mile oval within the walls of the 1.5-mile superspeedway. A one-fifth-mile oval is located just outside Turn 3.
NASCAR's top-5 longest tracks#5 Indianapolis Motor Speedway.#4 Daytona International Speedway.#3 Talladega Superspeedway.#2 Circuit of the Americas.#1 Road America.
Track renovation and length The raceway was originally constructed with a 2.5 miles (4.0 km) road course that ran on both the inside and the outside of the main tri-oval. In 1991 the track was reconfigured with the current 1.51 miles (2.43 km) interior layout.
The current year’s schedule will have seven street course races – Daytona, Circuit of the Americas, Sonoma, Road America, Watkins Glen, Indianapolis, and Charlotte. It is one more than NASCAR initially expected; the Daytona street course supplanted a formerly planned race at Auto Club Speedway in California because of the pandemic.
Abhay Aggarwal is sports analyst at EssentiallySports. Having joined ES in early 2020, he has over 300 NASCAR, Formula 1, and Tennis articles to his name. Abhay has been an avid motorsports fan for over a decade, and he even attended the inaugural Indian Grand Prix in 2011.
The 2018 NASCAR season is about to undergo several major adjustments to change things up for racers and fans. Several things like the Daytona 500 being moved back onto the weekend of President’s day were expected.
It was a wise decision on NASCAR’s part to add some road course dates. The truth is that NASCAR will never be like Formula One. The oval is what makes NASCAR. However one of the ways NASCAR has drawn in new spectators is to have races on road courses.
A Vehicle Service Contract (VSC) is often referred to as an “auto warranty” or an “extended car warranty,” but it is not a warranty. A VSC does, however, provide repair coverage for your vehicle after the manufacturer’s car warranty expires.
As far as road courses, the diehards got their wish. NASCAR will go to the Circuit of The Americas on May 23 for the first time. Road America is back on the Cup Series schedule, where it hasn’t visited since 1956.
NASCAR also added a playoff system similar to other major sports, and for the most part, fans and drivers alike don’t seem to have any issues with it. Despite those additions, it did not add any fannies in the seats or draw more eyeballs to their broadcasts.
Typically in a NASCAR season, there are only two or three road courses at most. This makes sense since the stock cars in NASCAR are really actually designed to mainly turn left. The road course races though do make for some exciting moments for fans. NASCAR is an entertainment property like all other sports
Drivers are the heart and soul of NASCAR. They are what gives the series its personality and one of the main reason fans tune in. NASCAR typically weighs the opinions of their drivers very heavily. In the case of adding more road courses though, seems as though NASCAR may not have listened to many of their drivers.
The Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is one of the crown jewel races in NASCAR. America’s most popular motorsport was racing on America’s most storied track. This year though, NASCAR will not be racing on Indy’s historic oval. This time the more openly critical Denny Hamlin said; “I don’t love it; I don’t love the move.