NASCAR viewer’s guide: Circuit of the Americas

The Next Gen car makes its official road course debut at Circuit of the Americas on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET, Fox).

Five races at five unique tracks have provided five different winners, a list most recently dotted by William Byron, who won at Atlanta Motor Speedway last weekend.

The inaugural Cup Series race in Austin, Texas was run in sopping wet conditions in May 2021. This weekend’s forecast is vastly different and should make for a more accurate test of Cup drivers’ ability around the 3.41-mile, 20-turn course than a year ago.

By all accounts, the newest generation of car in the Cup Series is meant to handle much better on road courses than its predecessor.

With rack-and-pinion steering now in play along with independent rear suspensions — both of which contrast from all previous iterations of NASCAR vehicles — drivers expect a completely different feel around COTA.

“This car is absolutely designed more for a road-course race type situation,” Aric Almirola said in a press release. “It’s a more symmetrical car. Our cars used to be offset, and they were more designed to go just left-hand only, so it was more of a big deal to swap over to go road racing. Now, these cars are more symmetrical. So because of that, it is more specifically designed to go left and right, which suits it very well for road racing.

“The car is a very capable car. It handles well, it brakes very well. It’s got much bigger brakes than what we used to have on the old car, so it stops way better and the brake zones are way more compressed. It is a little bit more thrilling of a car to drive on the road courses.”

That agility was something most drivers were able to experience in a two-day test session at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval in October.