Playoff drivers set for ‘roval’ challenge
Circuit combines road course, oval
Crazy, unique, unforgiving, wild, narrow, treacherous and scattered with squiggles and whoop-de-doos. That’s just a sample of how NASCAR drivers have described the new track at Charlotte Motor Speedway throughout the last year.
The half-oval and half-road course — or “roval” as it’s been dubbed — will create a largely unknown challenge for drivers this weekend because Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Bank of America Roval 400 (2 p.m. ET, NBC) is the inaugural race on the 2.28mile circuit.
They don’t know what they don’t know about racing on this course, and the stress of that unfamiliarity is amplified for the 16 playoff drivers who are fighting for 12 spots in the first cutoff race of the postseason.
“It’s gonna be interesting for sure,” said Denny Hamlin, who drives the No. 11 Toyota and is 16th, 29 points below the cutoff mark. “It’s definitely going to be one of those wild-card races. It’ll be a survival race. A lot of good competitors could easily have trouble at that racetrack.”
With 17 turns — eight of which are contiguous through a chunk of the infield — the roval is a sharp contrast to the typical four-turn 1.5-mile oval drivers are used to circling.
Teams will still have three practices, plus qualifying, to get in some lastminute laps, and many tested throughout the last year. But not everyone had a good experience.
“Ten or so guys wrecked by themselves testing there,” Alex Bowman recalled to USA TODAY about his test in July. “You don’t see Cup guys make mistakes like that very often at all, so it’s just a really tough place to get around.”
But the pressure is off for Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch, who won the first two playoff races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Richmond Raceway, respectively, and automatically advanced to the Round of 12.
It was Keselowski’s third consecutive checkered flag, while Busch is up to seven trips to victory lane this season — tied for the most with Kevin Harvick.
Along with Keselowski and Busch, defending series champion Martin Truex Jr. clinched his spot in the next round based on playoff points, and Harvick, sitting 57 points ahead of the cutoff mark, is all but guaranteed to advance.
Barely ahead of the cutline, Chase Elliott (+10), Austin Dillon (+10), Bowman (+5) and Ryan Blaney (+4) enter the weekend occupying the ninth through 12th-place spots. But not finishing or a poor performance could easily knock any of them out.
“There’s going to be a lot of beating and banging, probably a lot of torn up race cars and carnage, so hopefully we can stay out of all that,” said Bowman, who drives the No. 88 Chevrolet. “I’m not necessarily the greatest roadcourse racer in the world, so if we can have a good, solid top-10 day, I think that’d be really good for us.”
Clint Bowyer, Jimmie Johnson, Erik Jones and Hamlin are ranked 13th through 16th and will be eliminated if they don’t finish higher than at least the other bubble drivers.
Although it’s stressful to compete in a cutoff race on a new, wacky and unpredictable course, everyone on the track is at least in the same boat this first time out.
Kurt Busch, who sits 15 points ahead of the cutline in eighth place, reaffirmed the importance of the playoff points accumulated in the first 28 races.
“The way that you take away the odds and ends that can happen to you is you have enough points built up so you don’t have the threat of being eliminated on a road-course playoff race,” Busch, who drives the No. 41 Ford, told USA TODAY. “It’s part of our schedule. It’s part of what we do and you work around it.
“It’s going to be wild either way.”