Is NASCAR’s Obsession with Road Courses Fading Away?

Just two years ago, the NASCAR Cup Series featured a record number of road courses on its schedule, resulting in seven highly competitive races. The excitement began with a first-time winner in Christopher Bell at the Daytona International Speedway road course and ended with a thrilling race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, where Kyle Larson triumphed while Kevin Harvick failed in his attempt to take Chase Elliott out of title contention—only to falter in the end.

However, the 2023 races failed to live up to those expectations. AJ Allmendinger’s recent victory at the Charlotte ROVAL was arguably the second-best road course race this year, which is not saying much considering the overall dissatisfaction with the track type. Shane van Gisbergen’s victory at the Chicago street course debut was a standout moment in an otherwise disappointing two years for road courses with the Next Gen car.

Just how bad has it become on the right-turn tracks? Five out of the six races with the fewest lead changes occurred on road courses this year.

2023 NASCAR Cup Series

Track	Lead Changes
Bristol Dirt	4
Watkins Glen	6
Chicago	7
Charlotte ROVAL	7
Sonoma	10
Indianapolis Road Course	10
Four other oval tracks with	10

This is not a desirable trend. Bristol Motor Speedway dirt track, after a three-year experiment, will not return to the schedule in 2024. Indianapolis Motor Speedway will also switch back to the 2.5-mile oval track previously used for the Brickyard 400 from 1994 to 2020.

Even when considering the addition of Circuit of the Americas, the combined lead changes for all six road courses is a mere 56. In comparison, the recent Talladega Superspeedway race had 70 lead changes in just one race.

However, this statistic does not solely determine what makes a good race. The aggressive performance by SVG at Chicago was undeniably captivating. Nonetheless, it serves as an indicator of the difficulty of passing on road courses. These tracks have become a race for track position, whereas drivers used to believe their talent had the greatest impact.

This limited the ability of drivers to recover from poor qualifying efforts, especially earlier this year when NASCAR eliminated stages on road courses. As a result, two races, Indianapolis and Watkins Glen, only had one caution flag each. Drivers starting from the rear in those events were fortunate to finish in the top 15 by the end of the race (e.g., William Byron’s drive at Indy).

Instead of making costly adjustments to the Next Gen car, the solution has been to revise the schedule. In 2024, there will only be five road and street courses, two of which, Watkins Glen and Charlotte, will be part of the playoffs.

Which driver will be most affected by the reduction in road courses? Let’s take a look at the performance of drivers on road courses in 2023 (minimum 2 starts).

2023 NASCAR Cup Series Road Course Stats

Driver	Avg Finish	Wins	Top 5s	Top 10s	Laps Led
Chris Buescher	7.8	0	1	5	1
William Byron	8.2	1	3	3	94
Chase Elliott	10.2	0	3	4	23
Kyle Busch	10.3	0	4	4	25
Ty Gibbs	10.3	0	2	3	1
Kyle Larson	12.2	0	2	3	0
Tyler Reddick	13.3	1	2	4	76
Ross Chastain	13.5	0	1	3	1
Martin Truex Jr.	13.8	1	1	3	51
Christopher Bell	14.2	0	2	3	58

Chris Buescher has been exceptional this year, consistently finishing no lower than 11th on any road course. While Chase Elliott, with his seven career road course victories, may suffer from the reduced schedule, it is worth noting that eight out of the top ten performers are playoff drivers in 2023. Elliott would almost certainly be in that group if he had competed in all regular-season races, and rookie Ty Gibbs narrowly missed the cut. This indicates how similar the majority of these road course events have become, with the same drivers contending as they would on NASCAR’s renowned intermediate tracks.

Inside The Numbers

8.0

Chase Elliott’s average finish in six playoff races—an impressive statistic. He has achieved five top 10 finishes, never finishing outside of 11th place, and has quietly elevated the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports program to the Round of 8. The team he eliminated? The No. 19, piloted by championship favorite Martin Truex Jr. These results raise the possibility of different teams winning the Cup driver and owner titles for the first time since the introduction of the current elimination format in 2014.

18

Number of laps led by Allmendinger throughout the season in the Cup Series before his victory at the Charlotte ROVAL (he led 46 laps during the race). The ‘Dinger also secured two wins and led 81 laps during a limited NASCAR Xfinity Series stint. This performance may explain why Kaulig Racing is considering sending him back to the Xfinity Series.

43

The number of Cup starts Brad Keselowski has made without winning a road course race.

Follow @NASCARBowlesReference