This Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course will be the eighth time the venue will host a NASCAR Cup Series playoff race since its debut in 2018. The 2025 season marks the sixth consecutive year in which the Roval has served as the sixth Playoff event — the elimination race for the Round of 12.
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Before Shane van Gisbergen’s dominant arrival this season, five different drivers had conquered the Roval in the Playoffs, led by Hendrick Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott (2019, 2020) and Kyle Larson (2021, 2024), who have won there twice.
It’s a different type of playoff venue, for sure, and drivers have been talking about it the whole weekend. Elliott described exactly what makes the Roval so unique.
“It’s just about how much of a natural flow it has; that’s the only difference I see with it. This is just a place that doesn’t have a very good natural flow. You go to Watkins Glen, and it flows, whether you like it or not,” said Elliott.
“That’s just kind of what it is, the way the racetrack was built, where certain turns set you up for the next one. And that’s how a lot of road courses are,” added the 2020 Cup Series champion.
Elliott then elaborated on how the track requires the driver to go about his business without having the luxury of following a certain rhythm like other road courses.
“They [other road courses] were purpose-built that way. Sonoma was that way in a lot of ways. COTA is that way in a lot of ways, and this place [Roval] is just not. And I think that’s where, coming back to finding that within yourself, creating that rhythm, creating that flow, is going to help you create repetition and lap time and be able to hit your marks and do it throughout the entirety of a run,” he elaborated.
NASCAR has been coming to the Roval for years now, and in Elliott’s eyes, it remains a choppy, makeshift road course that lacks the fluid rhythm most drivers look for. And since rhythm and flow are key to mastering any road course, at least for him, finding that balance at Charlotte Roval doesn’t come easy.
The challenge lies in creating the flow from scratch. The #5 driver admitted that he’s had weekends when he’s managed to strike that balance and others when it’s slipped through his fingers. Still, Elliott is determined to find the flow that separates the good from the great on Roval.
