This weekend the NASCAR Cup Series will be hitting the road course at Circuit of The Americas (COTA) track in the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix.
There was a time when most NASCAR drivers were not very good on road courses. In fact, a lot of teams brought in road course ringers to drive for those races. When points became more and more important, teams started getting their drivers to get better at road courses.
Now, there are many active drivers that are pretty good at racing the road courses. With more road courses on the schedule each year, almost all of the drivers race themselves to earn whatever points they can.
For just the third time ever the NASCAR Cup Series will be racing at COTA. The nature of road course racing in NASCAR makes this a “wild card” race. That means literally anybody in the race could find themselves in position to win at the end. Getting to that position not only depends on driver skill, it also can be affected by race strategy. Pitting at the right times can put a car in position to race for the win at the end. However, it could remove winning from possibility as well.
Here is the data for the track and the race.
Circuit of The Americas Track Data
Track Size: 3.41-miles
Track Type: Multi-Elevational Counterclockwise Road Course
Number of Turns: 20
EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix Data
Season Race #: 6 of 36 (03-26-23)
Race Length: 68 laps (231.88-miles)
Stage 1 and 2 Length: 15 laps (each)
Final Stage Length: 38 laps
As alluded to earlier, there’s only ever been two NASCAR Cup Series races at COTA. The first one was May 23, 2021 and the event was shortened due to weather. Chase Elliott was the winner of that race.
The other race was last year, March 27, 2022. Ross Chastain scored his first ever NASCAR Cup Series win in that race.
With such limited experience with this particular track and the “wild card” nature of road racing, I will not even try to predict who will win. We will have to see what happens Sunday, March 26th starting at 2:30 p.m. central time (3:30 p.m. eastern time) in the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.
By: Buck Stevens
