Does NASCAR have too many road courses?

The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season has seen an influx of road courses races. But is seven too high of an amount moving forward?

The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series schedule features a historically high number of road courses with seven after previous years had seen just two or three.

Existing tracks on the schedule, including Daytona International Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, now have an interior road course or “roval” race, while other road course races have been contested at venues added to the calendar, including Circuit of the Americas and Road America.

Most notably, the Brickyard 400 was turned into the Verizon 200, replacing the traditional Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval race with a race at the track’s interior road course.

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This doesn’t please a number of drivers, either. South Bend, Indiana native and current Roush Fenway Racing driver Ryan Newman said that he would prefer the Indianapolis race to be on the “big track and not the road course”.

So gone is the traditional crown jewel event that is the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a race which saw Indiana natives Newman and NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart find victory lane, and in comes a road course race for the new generation of drivers to run.

So with the season-high in road course races, including one that comes at the expense of a crown jewel event, is it simply too much at this point?

While the wave of road course racing could take some time to get used to, it also has added an extra level of competition. Hendrick Motorsports drivers Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson have both picked up two wins on road courses this year, and Stewart-Haas Racing rookie Chase Briscoe has shown his prowess on road courses, earning all three of his top 10 finishes at such tracks.

Even with the influx of road course races, the schedule still heavily favors ovals, and that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. NASCAR still delivers a great product in the form of oval racing, but it has found a way to push the drivers even further with road course racing.

And with rumblings of a street course could be added to the schedule, it seems that road courses are here to stay.

NASCAR wants to find out who the best drivers are, and while some such as Elliott may hit road courses right off the bat, long gone are the days when teams had to substitute a “road course ringer” for a one-off appearance.

In finding the best driver, NASCAR must push the drivers out of their comfort zone, and they’ve done just that. Now drivers not only have to learn ovals on surfaces of concrete, asphalt and dirt, but they have to learn to navigate both left and right turns when they race on road courses.