Christopher Bell stood in the media center at Texas Motor Speedway last September and didn’t hesitate when asked about what changes might be made to the 1.5-mile track.
“I would be willing to do anything,” he said. “Certainly, if there’s a mile and a half (track) on the schedule that needs to be adjusted, it would be Texas. I think everyone would agree with that.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the NASCAR Cup Series garage area who feels differently. Texas has become NASCAR’s most maligned track, an annual punching bag that drivers and fans feel innocent in viewing as an object of derision.
Of course, no one wants Texas to be like this. But he is. In our weekly “Was it a good race?” poll, Texas remains the only NASCAR track to never exceed 70 percent of the “Yes” vote (despite 15 attempts).
“When it comes to racetracks, we all wish we could do more there,” Ross Chastain said. “It’s really one of the hardest tracks to convey. When I get a pass, I sometimes physically celebrate in the car on the next straight because I did what I thought was impossible.
How did Texas get here? Here’s a refresher on recent history and a look at how it all went wrong.
January 6, 2017
After two straight years of weather-related delays, partly due to aging pavement, Texas announced a repaving and drainage system project that would speed up the lane drying process. Eddie Gossage, then the track’s president, noted that the old asphalt had become “porous, a bit like a sponge,” which turned even a brief downpour into a delay of several hours.
The side note to all of this, and something that barely made headlines at the time: Texas would reconfigure turns 1 and 2 to make them wider and flatter while keeping turns 3 and 4 the same degree of inclination. Texas would then have two different ends of the track and become NASCAR’s most unique intermediate circuit.
“This will force the teams to slow down in turns 1 and 2 and perhaps brake,” Gossage explained in a video message. “And that creates the opportunity for other cars to overtake. Changing and re-profiling the circuit means creating better competition, more overtaking, things of that nature – giving these cars the opportunity to put on an even better show.
April 2017
The new track surface and configuration immediately became a problem for the drivers, who could spot potential problems with the slick even before taking to the track for the first practice session. With the repave completed a few weeks early, Goodyear didn’t have time to bring in a new tire for the first race – and it was a bad combination.
“I’ll be curious to see the brave soul who hits the track first today,” Chris Buescher said before the first practice session. “It won’t be me.”
Ultimately, nine drivers spun or crashed during practice and several had to use backup cars for the race.
“This baby is ice,” Denny Hamlin radioed to his team after shooting during practice. “No f——g grip at all. S—engaged show.
But the race itself did not see an unusual number of cautions; It was uneventful, which was typical of Texas racing, even before the repave.
November 2018
There was no strong criticism of the track until after the fourth race on the reconfigured layout, which was considered a particularly boring race.
Afterwards, Chase Elliott called Texas “a really frustrating track since they ruined it two years ago” and added: “I don’t know what genius decided to pave this place or take out the turns 1 and 2, but that’s not a good thing for the entertainment factor, in my opinion.
Speedway Motorsports had tried using the “tire dragon” — a tire-pulling machine that deposited rubber in the top groove to widen the racing line — since repaving, but it didn’t make much difference.
So after the November 2018 playoff run, officials opted to try a drastic solution: the application of a traction compound known as VHT (later PJ1).
March 2019
The spring race at Texas was the best since the reconfiguration, and drivers widely praised the VHT as being responsible for better racing – even though it was also the first race at Texas with the much-discussed 550 package ch.
“I was pretty disappointed when I landed and saw the VHT on the runway,” Clint Bowyer said. “I thought, ‘What the hell are they doing?’ Because I haven’t had the best experience with it (on the shorter tracks where it had been used before). But I felt like it helped this place.
It had already become evident with the 550 package that cooler temperatures helped the cars put on a better show and the spring race in Texas also provided ideal conditions. This prompted Erik Jones to say that the improvement in racing was 70 percent due to the VHT and 30 percent to the cool temperatures.
Suddenly, it seemed like there was hope for Texas.
“I actually thought the race was better than it has been in recent years with the low downforce package, and this is probably the first week I would have said that,” Jones said.
Coloring of traces
Within a year, a problem arose: Even though traction compound stopped being added in turns 1 and 2 and there were several attempts to scrape, clean and remove it, the track was stained. IndyCar drivers in particular found that simply touching the area stained by the remains of PJ1 would result in an immediate crash, and even NASCAR essentially only had one usable lane despite that area being one of the widest turns of the entire circuit.
The racing was affected in both series and the bad news continued to come. In September 2020, Athleticism reported that NASCAR would move the All-Star Race to Texas for 2021 – but the track would lose a points race as a result (which opened the door for a race at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas).
A month later, lingering mist on the slippery track caused a headache that postponed the NASCAR playoff race three times until it finally ended on a Wednesday.
Gossage announced the next spring that he would step down after 25 years, and attendance continued to decline for the fall race – so much so that it was mentioned during the state of the sport’s annual press conference. NASCAR President Steve Phelps.
“We can all agree that Texas was not our strongest asset for the year,” Phelps said in November 2021, adding that Texas had “an unacceptable level of tickets sold in that market.”
2022-23: Critics mount, then rebound
In March 2022, IndyCar asked its teams to do voluntary training just to race in the top lane. But according to the Indianapolis Star, there was still enough years-old traction compound left in the asphalt’s crevices that tire supplier Firestone discovered it had “20 percent less grip” than the bottom lane.
In May of that year, the second NASCAR All-Star race at Texas was one of the worst races in NASCAR history: it garnered only 11 percent “Yes” votes in the Good poll Race, which places it at the bottom of the list (out of 308). races surveyed).
Second worst race? It happened in September in Texas, a caution fest with flat tires that lasted more than four hours. By then, tired NASCAR drivers were starting on site, and the second Texas weekend was completely removed from the schedule.
Kyle Larson: “I wish they would tear this place down and start from scratch. »
Ryan Blaney (who won the Texas All-Star Race): “You ask anyone in the garage and they will tell you the exact same thing. This place was amazing, just like Atlanta. And now we’ve lost them both (Atlanta has been reconfigured as a superspeedway).
Hamlin: “They just really tried to get creative and build something different, but different isn’t always great. Its design just doesn’t fit what we do.
Bizarrely, though, IndyCar then delivered perhaps the best motorsport race in the world in 2023; Last April, drivers made more than 1,000 on-track passes in Texas (600 more than the previous year) and made 26 lead changes, the most in Texas since 2001.
But when NASCAR wanted to move the remaining Texas race from the fall to the spring, IndyCar had nowhere to set its date and left Texas off its schedule for the first time since the race opened. track in 1997.
Yet despite it being only one major race weekend, few in NASCAR want to see the track removed from the schedule completely. Another reconfiguration, perhaps simply to correct the mistakes of Turns 1 and 2, would be preferable to the disappearance of the nation’s fifth-largest media market.
“There’s not really a race car setup that seems to work well there or anything that you can spray on the track,” Alex Bowman said last week. “Some sort of reconfiguration is probably the best solution. Obviously, it’s a huge place for us, and we want him to run better than he is.
— Jordan Bianchi contributed reporting from Martinsville Speedway
(Top photo: Austin McAfee / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)