CONCORD, NC – Every year since 1960, NASCAR has held a fall race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on its mile-and-a-half asphalt oval.
But for the past eight seasons, this race in early October had been held on a road course. The folks at Speedway Motorsports – the owner of the track in Concord, North Carolina – reconfigured the layout of the fall competition into a 2.28-mile road course with 17 turns. Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson each took the checkered flag twice there, while road course ace Shane van Gisbergen captured what would be, for now, the final checkered flag of the Roval.
The Roval is gone and the Bank of America 400 has returned. This weekend, drivers in all three national touring circuits will race around Charlotte’s traditional oval just
like they did earlier this season during Memorial Day Weekend.
When Speedway Motorsports announced that the Roval was going into hibernation, the move was widely celebrated. Many drivers believe that Charlotte’s traditional oval is one of the best intermediate tracks in the sport right now, especially for the Cup Series’ Next Gen car. This week, folks around the sport continued to celebrate the fall oval race returning.
"Praise God we’re not racing through the dang parking lot of the best oval in the world this weekend," Dean Thompson, a driver for Sam Hunt Racing in the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, posted on X this week.
Hall of Fame driver turned team owner and broadcaster Dale Earnhardt Jr. echoed Thompson’s sentiment on his podcast this week saying, "There’s some people that love the Roval out there. I ain’t one of them."
While the elimination of the Roval was cheered by some, it made others a bit disappointed. Not that they particularly loved the track, but because it left NASCAR’s postseason Chase without a road course in it.
Tyler Reddick was among the drivers who didn’t mind the Roval and also believes that the postseason should feature every style of track.
“You know, I enjoyed the Charlotte Roval,” Reddick told USA TODAY Sports. “It's just such a shame though because the Charlotte oval is such a good intermediate track for us right now. It's almost like – if the market could stand it – Charlotte needs three dates. I think given what the Chase is about, you know, the complete team that can win on all the track types, from that perspective and point of view, it's important to have (a road course) in there.”
Following 12 years of the win-and-in, elimination-style playoff format, the Chase returned this season for NASCAR. This postseason system is designed to award consistency and drivers who have achieved success over the stretch of a long season – that began all the way back in February at the Daytona 500 – rather than drivers who simply won one race amid an otherwise mediocre season.
It’s also suppossed to reward drivers who have success at various types of tracks. This year's Chase featured an old-school crown jewel with the Southern 500 at Darlington, a flat track in World Wide Technology Raceway, short tracks with Bristol, Phoenix and Martinsville, a super speedway in Talladega, a track at Homestead-Miami that has steep and progressive banking, plus intermediates in Kansas, Las Vegas and Charlotte.
Missing from the 10-race postseason? A road course.
“I definitely think there should be a road course in the Chase,” Ryan Blaney, who the inaugural Roval race in 2018, told USA TODAY Sports. “Then you get everything, right? You get super speedways, short tracks, mile-and-a-half's, road courses – you hit them all. I’m happy to see a road course back in it next year.”
Indeed, NASCAR’s 2027 schedule will see a long-time road course staple in Watkins Glen moved into the postseason Chase. The Cup Series has raced at the 2.4-mile course near western New York’s Finger Lakes annually since 1986.
Should he make the postseason next year, that will be good news for van Gisbergen.
The 37-year-old from New Zealand just missed the Chase by just 31 points this season. He was the last driver cut from the postseason field after Ryan Preece’s shocking walk-off win at Daytona in the Coke Zero Sugar 400.
van Gisbergen has quickly established himself as one of the best road and street course racers NASCAR has ever seen in just his second full-time season in the sport. The driver of the No. 97 Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing – whose roots are in V8 Supercars and GT Racing – needs just two more victories to tie Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon for the most career road course wins at the Cup level (9) and AJ Allmendinger for the most across NASCAR’s top three touring series (14).
"I feel like you can have a little more influence on the car,” van Gisbergen said earlier this season of road courses and short tracks. “You can manipulate it with the brake or brake bias and whatever gear you're running, you can vary your line a little more. I feel like there's a little more as a driver you can do. You can kind of make up for a deficiency in the car as well with whatever tools you have. Whereas on a big track, you're kind of just stuck with what you got sometimes."
This season, the NASCAR Cup Series raced at four road courses in the Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas, Watkins Glen, Naval Base Coronado in San Diego and Sonoma. van Gisbergen won the races at Watkins Glen and Sonoma, and also took checkered flags in the second-tier O’Reilly races at COTA and Sonoma.
The Truck Series also held road course races on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, and at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut this season. The Truck Series will also return to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario next year.
Count Steve Letarte – the former crew chief for Gordon and Earnhardt Jr. who is now a broadcaster for Amazon, TNT and the USA Network – among those who would like to see a road course later in the season. For the Cup Series, Sonoma was the final road course race of this year, held on June 28.
"I don't love that (Sonoma) was our last (road course race). I wish we had one closer to the Chase, if not in the Chase," Letarte told USA TODAY Sports. "I feel like if you have four (road course races) that's basically 10% of your season. I believe when we crown a champion at the end of the Chase, I wish there was a road course in it."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Charlotte Roval is gone, but some NASCAR drivers want a road course in the Chase
