When Denny Hamlin emerged from the clutches of potential Round of 16 elimination to advance in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, his crew chief, Chris Gabehart, offered a preview of what the three races in the Round of 12 might hold — featuring Kansas, Talladega and “whatever the Smith family has dreamed up for the Roval next.”
The Smith family’s Speedway Motorsports group has indeed put a new spin on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, with revisions that could potentially be a dream or a nightmare that shift the complexion of Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, NBC Sports App, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The final road-course race of the season will determine which eight among the 12 remaining playoff-eligible drivers will keep their championship hope intact.
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The reconfiguration might seem subtle, and the 17-turn track’s length of 2.28 miles remains unchanged on the teams’ entry-blank forms for this year’s edition. Chase Elliott is a two-time conqueror of previous versions of Charlotte’s road-and-oval hybrid, which joined the NASCAR circuit in 2018, but his approach to this season’s revamped layout is mostly new, relying on racing-simulator seat time for his pre-race prep.
“To me, I kind of look at it like it’s a new race track, truthfully,” said Elliott, the 2020 Cup champion. “That section of the track is going to change the entire flow of the lap there, so I‘ve been kind of approaching it as a new track with my preparation. I‘ve spent some time in the simulator, just trying to really memorize the track and where the little bumps are. Typically, those track scans are pretty good. I think that‘s probably one of the best things about the simulator is that a driver can go and get familiar with the track layout, surface content, roughness, so on and so forth. It‘s really about all I feel like I can do until we get some time on track. Obviously, we have extra practice next week, so hopefully that‘s enough to find a good rhythm and get a good flow for qualifying and then obviously for the race.”
Cup Series and Xfinity Series teams competing at the Charlotte Roval are scheduled for extended practice time Saturday, with Cup teams splitting up into two groups with two 20-minute sessions each. What they’ll find are two altered areas — one in the Turns 6 and 7 complex that leads from the infield section back onto the oval, and another revision that sharpens the Turn 16 frontstretch chicane before the start/finish line.
The infield reconfiguration stands to be the most dramatic. A longer straightaway now connects Turn 5 to Turn 6, where an elevation drop into the right-hand bend promises to compromise drivers’ visibility. That sets up a significantly tighter Turn 7, a slow left-hander that may open the door for bold passing opportunities — an area that former Roval winner Ryan Blaney termed as a “dive-bomb central” type of curve.
“I have not been to the track physically; I’ve just run it at the sim, but yeah, Turn 6 is like 100% blind,” said Alex Bowman, fifth in the Cup Series standings and plus-26 relative to the playoff-elimination line. “You can’t see it until you’re there, which is pretty interesting. At least in the sim, your lift mark is before you can see the corner, so that’s definitely different. And Turn 7 is like making a U-turn on a one-way street, so it’s going to be chaos, for sure.”
Said 2022 Roval winner Christopher Bell: “It’s going to be big. We’re going to have a new calamity corner, that’s for sure.”
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The modifications to the frontstretch chicane are more slight, but the arcing entry to that portion of the course now sways more to the left, closer to the outer pit-road barrier. That change is designed to create a sharper angle on the right-hand Turn 16, another alteration that could promote passing on the last set of bends before the flagstand.
“Honestly, I think the frontstretch chicane is going to be a slower corner, so I feel like you might have some more outbraking potential there, so I think it‘s good,” said Blaney, who won the first Charlotte Roval event in 2018. “I think it‘s good they changed it up. Whenever you add passing zones, that‘s good for a race. It‘s the same for everybody. It‘s going to be different for everyone and just who can adapt to it the quickest. I‘ve done some sim work. I‘ve got another session this week and we‘ll see where it goes.”
Sunday’s 400-kilometer, 109-lap Roval event will wrap up what’s already been a treacherous round for a solid chunk of the postseason field. Kansas Speedway opened the Round of 12 and produced a non-playoff spoiler with Ross Chastain’s first victory of the season. That theme continued at Talladega Superspeedway last weekend with another new winner outside the playoff grid in Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who threaded through one of the biggest crashes in Cup Series history to prevail.
The Charlotte road-course layout has undergone a handful of tweaks and tucks in its brief NASCAR history, but one feature has been constant — all six Roval races thus far have been playoff elimination events. Some drivers are welcoming that challenge along with the track’s newfangled look.
“It’s going to be interesting,” said Daniel Suárez, 10th in the standings and facing a 20-point deficit to the elimination line. “I’m happy that SMI (Speedway Motorsports) and everyone in NASCAR is allowing these kind of changes, because if you think about it, we’ve been racing already at the Roval for a handful of years, and it’s been amazing. We all have enjoyed it so much, but a little change like this always, in my mind, will spice things a little bit. So I’m happy. I’m happy that we are always continuing to think outside the box a little bit. I think this makes the sport exciting.”
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