NASCAR Reconfigured The Roval And No One Knows What’s Going To Happen Next

Intermediate track racing in the mid-to-late 2010’s had evolved into something that was barely more than a snooze fest. Charlotte Motor Speedway was not immune to this phenomenon, which was made worse by the lingering effects of a 2006 repaving. Ticket sales were beginning to slump as the track repeatedly put on lackluster racing. In an effort to boost ticket sales, speedway owner Marcus Smith came up with the idea to move the Fall race onto a combination of the oval and an infield road course. Thus the “Roval” was born.

The Athletic writer Jeff Gluck has conducted an informal poll on X after each race since the beginning of the 2016 season. The poll simply asks “Was it a good race?” with a yes or no response option. In the 2016 and 2017 seasons, racing on the oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway averaged a 55% yes. In the same time window, the road course races at Watkins Glen and Sonoma averaged a 78% yes response. The general consensus at the time was that NASCAR needed more road courses and short tracks and fewer intermediate races. The Roval solution acted as a sort of best-of-both-worlds solution. NASCAR could simultaneously gain a road course while killing an intermediate without having to do any rearranging of the schedule.

After a chaotic debut race in 2018, with a memorable and surprising finish, the Roval was off to a blazing start. The inaugural Roval race scored a 92.8% yes response in the Good Race poll, the third highest-scoring race of the year. The four Roval races in the pre–Next Gen era had an average yes response of 88%.

The advent of the Next Gen Cup series car brought about a tremendous shift in racing quality. With bigger brakes, a wider contact patch, a sequential gearbox, and an independent rear suspension, the Next Gen car simply drove too well to put on good road course racing. The old Cup (and current Xfinity) cars put on entertaining racing because they drive like absolute crap. They don’t want to stop, don’t want to turn, and don’t want to put the power down exiting the corners. Drivers making mistakes is what generates entertaining racing and keeps drivers moving forward and backward through the field over the course of an event.

The Next Gen car cured (most of) the issues with intermediate track racing, but it was at the detriment of short tracks and road courses. The first two Charlotte oval races in the Next Gen era scored a 91% yes average whereas the Roval races scored a 39%.

In an attempt to spice up the racing this year, NASCAR and Charlotte Motor Speedway have slightly reconfigured the circuit. You can see the original circuit below.

And the newly reconfigured circuit is as follows.

The main changes are in the infield section, but the front stretch chicane has also been reprofiled. Instead of taking a right-hand turn over the crest of the hill for the old Turn 6, drivers will continue straight over the top of the hill to enter the new Turn 6. With a blind entry over the hilltop and an off-camber profile, this area will likely be a trouble spot for drivers throughout the weekend. You can see the new Turn 6 at about the one-minute mark of the video below. There are virtually no natural references for braking or turn-in save for whatever signage is placed alongside the track. There is also little-to-no runoff on corner exit, so a mistake will probably be the end of a driver’s day.

I believe Turn 7 was intended to be a passing opportunity with a long braking zone and a roughly 30 mph apex speed. In reality, the only passing in this corner will likely be one driver shipping another Amazon Prime same-day delivery.

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— Aedan McHugh (@AedanMcHugh) October 11, 2024

The straightaway connecting Turns 6 and 7 isn’t long enough to allow drivers to get back to wide-open throttle for any significant portion of time and the car will hardly have a chance to settle into steady state. There simply isn’t enough distance to generate a meaningful run that could be used for a clean overtake.

The front stretch chicane was slightly reprofiled for this year, bringing the apex curb out several feet to make the corner sharper. The old chicane was taken in 2^nd gear for the Xfinity cars and 3^rd gear for the Cup cars. The reconfiguration will see drivers in both series drop down one more gear. This will create a longer braking zone and could open up more room for overtaking, but it will also cause the field to spread out more on initial restarts as cars further back in the field will get choked down in the chicane while the leaders scoot away.

Aside from its new features, the Charlotte Roval is one of the trickiest road courses to set a car up for. The majority of the road course corners are slow right-handers, but drivers will still reach speeds of around 145 mph on the banked, left-hand corners on the oval section. This is only slightly slower than the purpose-built oval cars will go through the corners with their asymmetrical package. A traditional road course car would suffer significant body roll and likely bottom out the right-hand side of the car in this section of the circuit.

Anything done to counter this over-traveling of the suspension on the oval section will have negative implications in the right-handed infield corners. A stiffer right rear spring will cause the car to understeer when turning to the right. Adding bumpstop packer to the right front will cause the nose of the car to settle unevenly under braking. Even the “simple” setup items like camber settings are compromised by how much the oval track body roll can be corrected for.

On an oval car, the left front tire would have positive camber. A road course car has negative camber on both front tires and this difference is significant. An oval car will “lose” left front camber as the suspension goes through travel in the corner, meaning the positive camber becomes less and begins to approach 0 degrees. The same phenomenon applies to the road course car except the negative camber becomes even more negative. While everyone would want more left front camber for the right-handed corners on the infield section, the tire can only handle so much while going through the banking.

It’s one of the trickiest tracks for both drivers and teams and it just so happens to be a playoff elimination race this weekend. Going into the Xfinity Series race, the drivers at or below the playoff cut line are the best road racers in the series.

Image: NASCAR

The first driver above the cut line is AJ Allmendinger, who has won every Xfinity series race he has entered at the Roval, but has struggled thus far in 2024. Justin Allgaier is the first driver below the cut line. Allgaier hasn’t had the best of luck so far at the Roval but always ends up at the front in this type of racing. Behind Allgaier is legendary road racer Shane Van Gisbergen who has found victory lane in three of the five Xfinity series road races this year. Next up in 11^th place is defending race winner Sam Mayer (my driver) who won three road course races in 2023. In last place is Parker Kligerman, who has one truck series road course win to his credit and always seems to find himself up front in these events.

The Charlotte Roval was at one point a necessary evil, but may have finally run its course as far as the Cup series is concerned. The new track configuration may hopefully breathe some life into the event. There’s a lot of unknowns going into the weekend and the only way to find out for sure is to get on track and go racing.