NASCAR: The most important track of the century?

In major motorsports divisions, each race track has a history and a lore that helps defines the legacy of the venue. NASCAR is no different.

Most famous NASCAR race tracks, such as Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, are so wildly famous that even people who don’t follow the sport are aware of their existence.

Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, is one of those tracks. It was NASCAR’s first quad-oval track and has hosted NASCAR’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600, for over six decades.

So when NASCAR announced that the 1.5-mile speedway would get a road course makeover for the 2018 playoff weekend, the idea was met with both enthusiasm and hesitation.

Despite fans’ long-time wishes for a road course race in the playoffs, the idea to transform a track at an iconic venue into an unknown, unproven “Roval” course layout created skeptics within the fanbase.

What if the racing wasn’t good? What if it was too big of a wild card?

On Sunday, September 30, 2018, NASCAR fans witnessed one of the most important races in the sport’s history.

Seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, who was trying to break the longest winless streak of his career, drove side-by-side into the 16th of 17 turns of the 2.28-mile course and wheel-hopped, triggering a spin by his #48 machine right into race leader Martin Truex Jr.

The two drivers crashed, allowing Ryan Blaney to steal a win in the inaugural race at the Roval. Behind them, Kyle Larson was trying to drive his wrecked #42 Chevrolet into the second round of the playoffs, and by virtue of a tiebreaker, that’s exactly what he did.

Fans raved about the action-packed racing that the track produced. The risk that NASCAR and Charlotte Motor Speedway had taken paid off, and fans quickly renewed and purchased tickets for the following year’s race.

In the time since that first race, three more very iconic races have been produced at the Roval, but the impact of that race was far more than adding another road course to the schedule; it launched NASCAR head-first into a new era.

The Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval was the first new track layout added to the Cup Series schedule since Kentucky Speedway was given a Cup Series race seven years earlier in 2011.

In fact, in the 20 seasons prior to the addition of the Roval, only five new tracks were added to the premier series’ schedule:

• Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 1998
• Homestead-Miami Speedway, 1999
• Chicagoland Speedway, 2001
• Kansas Speedway, 2001
• Kentucky Speedway, 2011

In the three seasons since the inaugural Roval race, there has been a scheduling boom in NASCAR. The Cup Series has already had an equal number of new tracks/track configurations added to the Cup Series schedule, with those being the following.

• Daytona International Speedway road course, 2020
• Bristol Motor Speedway dirt track, 2021
• Circuit of the Americas, 2021
• Nashville Superspeedway, 2021
• Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, 2021

NASCAR also added Road America back to the schedule after a 65-year absence, and the sport has promised the addition of Cup Series events at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway next year, plus a newly-configured half-mile Auto Club Speedway for 2023.

The risk involved in adding the Roval to the schedule was followed by the success. This has since influenced NASCAR to take more scheduling risks than ever before in hopes of creating more action on the track as well as expanding the sport’s reach by traveling to new markets to host races.

The Roval didn’t just influence the boom of new venues in the sport. It also influenced the expansion into a very specific type of racing: road course racing. Of the nine tracks that have been added or re-added since the first Roval race, four are road courses.

For many years, NASCAR’s top series never took more than two trips to road courses in a single season, but in 2021, seven championship events were contested on road courses. The Clash exhibition race was also contested on a road course for the first time in the event’s history.

The increased number of these tracks has also influenced the build of the Next Gen car. This car has been built with bigger brakes and a sequential shifter, two perfect additions to support road course races.