It’s elimination time in NASCAR’s playoffs at the newly changed Charlotte Motor Speedway, where adjustments to the hybrid road course/oval called The Roval have made things tense for the drivers competing for a championship.
After Sunday’s race, four drivers will be cut from the current field of 12. Joey Logano, Daniel Suarez, Austin Cindric, and Chase Briscoe are below the cutline. William Byron has already secured his spot in the next round, while Christopher Bell mostly just needs to start the race to move on.
This means anything can happen on the reconfigured Roval, which is the last race in a second round of playoffs that has been unusual. No championship-eligible driver won at Kansas Speedway or Talladega Superspeedway, and last week’s race at Talladega ended in chaos when 28 cars crashed with five laps left, marking the largest crash in NASCAR history.
Now, The Roval is up next. Speedway Motorsports designed it in 2018 to refresh the traditional 1.5-mile speedway, which fans were tired of due to the lack of variety in NASCAR tracks. The original layout had its own chaos, but drivers thought it didn’t have enough spots for overtaking.
However, the new design has two “passing zones” that seem more like “crashing zones.”
The changes start at Turn 5, where a fast downhill corkscrew has shown cars flying off all four wheels during simulator tests. Instead of turning right, the straightaway has been lengthened towards a new Turn 6, which features an elevation change that affects drivers’ visibility until they reach the top of the hill.
Drivers will need to slow down for Turn 6, then make a sharp left turn into Turn 7, which is basically a 180-degree turn onto the banked oval. The final chicane also has a sharper angle for the drivers to handle at Turn 16.
“The reconfigure was designed to create more chaos. You’re going to have to convince me otherwise of that,” said Denny Hamlin. “They made corners sharper and tighter.
They want you to drive straight into the corner, I believe, and wipe out whoever is in front of you, and then it’s going to be a parking lot in Turn 7. Then it’s just going to be who can get through there.”
“There’s a blind spot when you go through 5 to 6; you go over a rise and your car gets really high. In the (simulator), it gets airborne.
It probably won’t happen in real life, but we get to experience this new Roval setup, and I don’t know what else to say about it other than try to qualify and avoid the wrecks. That’s about it.”
Title contender Alex Bowman said: “Turn 6 is like 100% blind. You can’t see it until you’re there, which is pretty interesting. And Turn 7 is like making a U-turn on a one-way street, so it’s going to be chaos, for sure.”
Is this fair for the drivers, who must quickly learn a new layout while their chances for the title are at stake?
“It’s the same for everybody,” said reigning Cup champion Ryan Blaney. “It’s going to be different for everyone and it will just be who can adapt to it the quickest. I’ve done some (simulator) work. We’ll see where it goes.”
