Echopark Automotive Grand Prix Track Breakdown

We’re going road racin’ baby! It’s the Echopark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas, or fondly known as COTA. The purpose-built F1 track is home to the NASCAR Cup series this weekend for a second year, and hopefully with better racing. Last year’s Cup race at COTA was a rainy affair and ended earlier after conditions were deemed too dicey to be raining in, though with curious timing. Luckily though, the first trip to the outskirts of Austin Texas won’t be the last for the Cup series. This track is just too good of a track to only be used once for NASCAR.

If you missed the racing last year here, let’s go over what the track is like real quick before diving into the strategy we typically use on road courses.

Track Facts

Circuit of the Americas is a 3.41-mile lap comprised of 20 turns and some of the biggest elevation changes anywhere in NASCAR. Just the first turn alone is more than a 100-foot climb up the front straightaway before a tight hairpin turn to really give the field choices of just how aggressive they’ll be. The rest of the track is made up of the designer’s favorite corners from F1 tracks all over the world. It is a technical driving challenge to be sure and also one of the fastest road layouts in the world. This combination of skills required makes it perhaps the toughest road course on the schedule. It’s also the second-longest road race in terms of miles at 231.9 miles over the 68 laps. In fact, the 68 laps at COTA produce a race 22 miles longer than the 400-lap Martinsville race in two weeks.

DFS Strategy

A new race weekend and a new DFS strategy to employ. That’s just the way 2022 is rolling right now. The addition of making right turns every lap certainly poses a new challenge — that some drivers deal better with than others. For DFS though, this is a racing style that favors those that can correctly pick the laps-led leader and the drivers that can successfully move up through the field. There are few laps in a road race which means there are fewer points to be gained from focusing on them. If you take a gander at the last five race tables, you’ll notice that the number of drivers leading a big chunk of laps at these tracks is pretty small. These are also tracks in which a lot of cautions don’t happen because of the nature of the wrecks. They are oftentimes single-car spins or a car driving off-track which don’t warrant a yellow being put out. The biggest chances for position differential gains is on the restarts or undercutting teams with pit stops.

Weekend Schedule

Cup Practice: 10 am ET Saturday

Cup Qualifying: 11 am ET Saturday

Cup Race: 3:30 pm ET Sunday

Tire Notes

The Cup drivers will have the same tire codes on all four corners of the cars this weekend. These are the same tires that will be on the cars at Sonoma and Road America as well. As is usual at road courses, the teams will have rain tires on hand as well in case of wet weather, though none is forecast for this weekend in Austin. 

Facts To Know

• Twice last year the pole-sitter one the race and dominated in laps led, three times they finished 20+ places back in the field.
• If chaos erupts, like the rain at COTA last year or the Indy Road Course curbing coming up, more than 30 cars should finish on the lead lap of the race.
• At Watkins Glen, Road America, and Sonoma last year there were a combined 14 double-digit place differential drivers for an average of 4.6 per race.
• Only four drivers in the field have an average Driver Rating over 100 in the last seven road races.
• Those same four drivers are the only ones with five or more top-10 finishes in the seven road races. Another five drivers have at least four top-10s in the last seven races.

Last Five Race Stats

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five, non-championship, Phoenix races with Race 1 being the most recent.

For the tables below:

• The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 Phoenix races for the data.
• The Road Races table: The data is comprised of stats from the last seven races across road races from last year.