AUSTIN, TX. -- The Cup Series teams take on Circuit of the Americas Sunday afternoon. This is the first road course race of the season, but it is not a standard trip to the Texas track.
Sunday's race will showcase a new layout, something that will test the drivers in ways that the previous layouts did not. The race will also have a new obstacle that presents both something to avoid and something to use while navigating the course.
Oh, and the drivers will also have to contend with the standard questions about race strategy, dirty air, and using the bumper.
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Tire pack in 6A-B -- The first four trips to Circuit of the Americas featured drivers taking on the longer, 3.410-mile layout. This season features a shorter version that eliminates a long straight stretch.
This layout forces the drivers to navigate a tighter section featuring a hairpin in Turn 6A and a sharp left-hander in Turn 6B.
This section creates many unknowns for NASCAR's top drivers with its mix of old and new asphalt. The drivers don't know if there will be much grip in this section or if they will slide around while trying to navigate the turns.
"The new asphalt's never picked up a tremendous amount of grip," Chris Buescher told AltDriver. He continued and said that the paint is actually the grippiest section of the new turns, which is not normal at the majority of NASCAR tracks.
The other addition to this section of the course is a tall tire pack sitting right in the middle of the hairpin. This prevents drivers from cutting the course but also presents another obstacle for when they are trying to race two- and three-wide.
Interestingly enough, drivers are not complaining about this tire pack, even though there is the potential for mid-race collisions.
"The tire packs, we wanted it for, one, when you are cresting the hill, it's hard to see the curb there," Ricky Stenhouse Jr. told AltDriver. "Track walk, you could see it, but when you are sitting down in the car, it's hard to see the apex.
"So with the tire pack there being tall, you can see where your turning point was."
Christopher Bell agreed with Stenhouse, saying, "It's a very awkward corner with how you're coming off of Turn 6, the right hander in the esses.
"The whole car is like pushing you out track left, and then you don't really have a ton of visuals getting into (turn) 6A there except now they have a big, old tire pack, which is good because that gives us a reference of where the apex is."
The Cup drivers closely watched Saturday's Xfinity Series race to see how younger drivers would handle this layout. They didn't see many issues. The drivers still battled for position while navigating the hairpin, and they managed to avoid slamming into the tire pack.
The lone exception was Carson Hocevar, who slammed into the outside tire barrier in Turn 6A after contact from Jeb Burton.
Tire falloff and Goodyear's new compound -- The new layout of Circuit of the Americas was the focus entering the 2025 iteration of the road course race. However, the conversation changed after Saturday's two practice sessions.
Goodyear brought a brand-new tire compound to Texas for the road course race. The manufacturer said that this compound -- never before used by Cup teams -- would have increased tire wear and falloff. Multiple drivers agreed with this assessment after seeing their speeds decrease during limited practice session runs.
"There was a decent amount of falloff," Michael McDowell told AltDriver after qualifying. "Practice is tough because when you come in and rerun, it's a little different sensation than when you go straight through a run. But there showed some falloff."
McDowell added that the tires definitely lost speed and hoped the race would force the drivers to manage their tires and create passing opportunities for themselves.
Said pole-winner Tyler Reddick, "Yeah, it's a lot more (falloff) than I feel like we've had here in the past. Even last year's tire was a good step to help that. It really does go away, and it goes away quick. That will be a handful tomorrow."
If the tires wear as expected, the drivers will have an extra challenge as they fight for track position. They could burn up their tires early and make numerous passes only to lose speed if the race remains green. They could also bide their time and wait for other competitors to use up their tires.
The esses -- Past races at Circuit of the Americas have put NASCAR competition officials in a difficult situation. They have been forced to make "ball and strike calls" as drivers navigated through the esses of Turns 3, 4, and 5.
If the officials in the tower determined that a driver had gone off course on their own volition, they issued a penalty. They held the penalty if they determined the driver had been forced off course by someone else.
An example of this was last season's Xfinity race at COTA. Shane van Gisbergen crossed the finish line second but received a post-race penalty for short-cutting the esses. A time penalty dropped him to a 27th-place finish.
These judgment calls created a situation where the officials were the focus instead of the action on the track, something that NASCAR never wants to happen.
NASCAR tested another option to avoid having to make these penalty calls. The sanctioning body put large, heavy blocks in the essses on Friday. This added a risk factor for drivers who ventured too far off the track.
400 lb walls in the esses GLHF #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/jQvpnVvNRW
— Anthony Alfredo (@anthonyalfredo) February 28, 2025
As Stenhouse said, they could hit those blocks and destroy their cars if they messed up in the esses. He added that he had concerns about drivers forcing each other off the track into the blocks.
Daniel Suarez took a different stance. He said that the blocks were less of a concern for him.
"A lot of people were complaining about the big, heavy things in the esses," Suarez said. "NASCAR doesn't want to be policing all these different penalties because of the track limits.
"So we have to be more disciplined. I was actually one of the drivers, I was okay with those being there because that was going to be one way to not cut the esses. A lot of people were saying, 'We're going to hit them and destroy the car.' Don't hit them."
NASCAR ultimately removed the walls from the esses. This meant that the two races would once again have officials making numerous penalty calls.
NASCAR issued six penalties for short-cutting the course during Saturday's Xfinity Series race. These drivers had to serve a stop-and-go in a specific section of the track.
Strategy at the end of stages -- One of the biggest road course storylines in the stage racing era of NASCAR is strategy. It doesn't matter the location, drivers will split into two groups at the end of stages 1 and 2 based on their respective outlooks.
The drivers who are going solely for the win will stop for tires and fuel before pit road closes with two laps to go. They will lose track position at the moment but will gain it back at the end of the stage.
The drivers who don't have a race-winning car will usually stay out and try to earn stage points. A driver running outside the top 10 has an opportunity to move up several spots if the drivers ahead of him pit early.
Carson Hocevar told AltDriver ahead of the trip to Texas that he didn't know if this strategy would still work with teams running the shorter course. However, the Xfinity Series drivers showed on Saturday that it still worked.
Race-winner Connor Zilisch was one of the drivers who stopped early when given the chance. Ross Chastain, William Byron, Jesse Love, and many other drivers also used the pit-early strategy. Harrison Burton, however, chose to stay out. This allowed him to win stage 2 and add some crucial points to his season-long total.