A look at the reconfigured Charlotte Roval
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.
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.
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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