Since Shane van Gisbergen shook the field with his wins in Chicago and Mexico, a debate has swept through the NASCAR garage over the growing footprint of road and street courses on the calendar. While the sport’s roots are firmly planted on ovals, the shift in terrain has raised more than a few eyebrows among veterans like Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell, however, is singing a different tune.
Advertisement
By season’s end, six road or street course races will have taken place, making up one-sixth of the 36-race Cup Series schedule. This weekend’s event at Sonoma Raceway marks the third such race in the last five events, with two more still to come later in the year, including one in the second round of the playoffs.
Speaking during the media scrum ahead of the Sonoma weekend, Bell stood his ground. He said, “I’m good with it. I don’t really know where we stack up. Are we right in line with what we’ve had the last couple years? I like it. I think it’s enough now where the teams and the drivers have to take it seriously.”
Bell argued that when road courses were limited to Sonoma and Watkins Glen, many teams treated them as throwaway weekends. “I said the same thing about the Bristol dirt race. With them, having only one dirt race a year, teams kind of viewed it as an off week a little bit,” he added.
Now with more road courses in play, Bell, who has an average finish of 14.0 on the road courses, believes the bar has been raised. “You have to be good at them if you want any chance at doing well in the season standings,” Bell concluded.
Even though Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin have also historically leaned against expanding the road course lineup, Hamlin recently tipped his cap to the Chicago Street Race, praising the energy of the crowd and the unique vibe it brought to the sport.
Unlike Bell, Keselowski and Dale Jr. push back on more road courses
Earlier, Brad Keselowski, whose record on road courses leaves much to be desired (zero wins in 51 starts and only seven top-fives), reshared a fan’s comment while voicing his discontent.
Keselowski tweeted, “We went from 2 to 6 Road course races, Possibly 7 next year. NASCAR was successfully built as a primarily oval racing series. IMSA was built as the primary road course series in North America. IMSA will always do road racing better than NASCAR and that’s ok. Yes, TOO Many Road courses in NASCAR.”
Dale Jr., who struggled on road courses himself (35 starts, no wins), echoed Keselowski’s view by posting a meme of John Cena with the caption, “You are absolutely correct,” lending his stamp of approval to the belief that the balance has tipped too far.
