There are still four races and more than a month before the NASCAR Cup Series travels to Mexico for the first time ever. The June 15 points-paying regular season event at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez (AHR) will likely have the most parity of the 36 regular season races. That’s because few drivers have ever visited – let alone raced in – the host venue, Mexico City.
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Austin Cindric, who is already locked into this season’s playoffs by virtue of his win two weeks ago at Talladega Superspeedway, is looking forward to racing south of the border.
But there’s also quite the unknown at a track – particularly a road course such as AHR – that presents a significant challenge not only while racing, but equally when it comes to pit stops on the 2.429-mile, 15-turn layout used exclusively for the NASCAR races in 2025.
AHR is the crown jewel of racing in Mexico, having been in operation for over 50 years and hosting a number of racing series, most notably Formula One.
“As far as Mexico, I’ve never even been in the country, so I’ve never driven on the circuit,” Cindric said. “I’m definitely interested to see and experience both of those things – one just personally and stepping out and going someplace new, but also just a new track and a new layout.”
Cindric began brushing up on AHR’s layout on a simulator, first during last offseason, and several more times in recent months.
“I think there will probably be a lot of similarities drawn to maybe the (Indianapolis Motor Speedway) road course, with just a really long straightaway on the frontstretch,” Cindric said. “It seems to be a fairly flat racetrack, so I’m definitely excited to see how that all translates.
“Obviously, we’re a month away, so there’s still a bit more prep to do. It’s also quite a bit higher altitude than anywhere else that we go, so I’m very interested to see how that responds with our engines and so on. It’s really cool. It’s really fun that we’re doing something different, and I definitely expect a great response by the fans.”
While adjusting to the track will take time during practice and qualifying on race weekend, one of the biggest adjustments Cindric and the other nearly 40 Cup drivers and their teams will have to make is pit road.
That not only includes getting on and off pit road, but also for drivers, crew chiefs and teams all to be ready to adapt to different changes that could significantly alter race strategy.
That includes weather (cars will race on rain tires, if need be), heat, humidity and how the motors in Cup cars will perform given both the track’s altitude and Mexico City’s often notorious air quality due to pollution.
Weather is just one piece of the strategy puzzle for Mexico City
There’s also the uncertainty of how tires will wear, how many laps they’ll hold up, and whether changing conditions will force crew chiefs to come up with alternate strategies.
Cindric quipped, “As far as the pit road question and drivers making a difference on pit road, yeah, there are a lot of areas to screw up — (pit) box placement, pit road speed. Most importantly, you obviously hear a lot about pit road speeding penalties, but I think there’s a lot of small bits of data you can get into that I can use to help my team.
“But at the end of the day, pit stops are still a very human-based performance metric and by that I mean it’s four or five guys, and if you include me it’s five or six guys working together and everybody anticipating a lot of things to go correctly and that’s why you see so many mistakes on pit road is that when one thing is off, it really snowballs.
“It’s a challenging atmosphere. It’s a huge part of the game and I don’t think it’s said enough about how challenging this pit road is for each week, and I think it’s one of the larger takeaways for anyone that’s never seen a NASCAR race in person is how much emphasis goes into those stops.”
From Cindric’s words, it feels like the road course race in Mexico City could be highly unpredictable — adding to the excitement that it might be any driver’s race to win.
