“In the Know”
Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL
The NASCAR Cup Series Round of 12 wraps up this weekend at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL. The elimination round takes place at 2 PM ET this Sunday on NBC, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Four driver’s title hopes will come to an end, as the field is cut to eight.
All four of the Stewart-Haas Racing Cup drivers will feature a pink window net on their car this week. The inspiration for “Window of Hope” came from one of Kurt Busch’s young fans to show support for breast cancer survivors and those continuing to battle breast cancer. Following the ROVAL, each driver will sign their window net. The nets will then go up for auction with all proceeds benefiting breast cancer research and treatment.
Charlotte Motor Speedway debuted its’ 2.28-mile, 17-turn ROVAL road course in 2018 in the Bank of America ROVAL™ 400. The unique circuit hosted the first road course race in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. Featuring twisting, left-right turns, chicanes on the frontstretch and backstretch and a 45-foot elevation change, the ROVAL™ quickly gained a reputation as one of NASCAR’s most challenging tracks. It remains the only road course in NASCAR in which race fans can see every turn from the main grandstands.
Fun fact from Charlotte Motor Speedway: during a typical race weekend, fans consume more than 34,000 slices of pizza, 9,500 gallons of soda and water, 13,500 feet of hot dogs and 309,000 pounds of ice.
The Details
NASCAR Cup Series Overview
● Event: Bank of America Roval 400 (Round 32 of 36)
● Time/Date: 2 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 10
● Location: Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval
● Layout: 2.28-mile, 17-turn road course
● Laps/Miles: 109 laps/252.88 miles
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 25 laps / Stage 2: 25 laps / Final Stage: 59 laps
● TV/Radio: NBC / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
NASCAR Xfinity Series Overview
● Event: Drive for the Cure 250 presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (Round 29 of 33)
● Date: Saturday, Oct. 9
● Location: Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval
● Layout: 17-turn, 2.28-mile road course
● Time/TV/Radio: 3 p.m. EDT on NBC/PRN/SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
What Our Drivers are Saying:
Kevin Harvick, Driver of the No. 4 Mobil 1 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
The Roval serves as a playoff cutoff race, with the field of 12 playoff drivers getting whittled down to eight. You’re still in the mix to advance to the Round of 8 – is that a testament to the work you and this Mobil 1 team have put in all season long?
“My team’s done a good job all year. We’ve had a lot of weeks where we’ve walked out of these tracks with a sixth-, seventh-, eighth-place finish. Our team itself has done a great job. We just needed to do a better job getting faster cars and sometimes that’s just not in the cards. You just have to plug away and take what you can get out of it and try to make the least amount of mistakes, and that’s the part our team has done well. We’ve gotten a lot of decent finishes throughout the year, and that just comes from experience. You dot the I’s and cross the T’s and, really, that’s what it all comes down to. We’ve lost a lot of races with fast cars and we’ve won some races with slow cars – you grind away and you just keep yourself in there and see where it all shakes out. Sometimes it’s in the car to win and sometimes it’s not, you just never know so you just grind away every lap.”
Aric Almirola, Driver of the No. 10 Ford Warriors in Pink Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
Since you’re not racing for points in the NASCAR playoffs, how do you approach this race differently?
“It’s one last opportunity for us this year to have some success at a road course. I think we’ll be good. We had a good car at the Daytona road course earlier this year and I thought we made huge gains over the past few years. The Roval is still a playoff cutoff race next year, so you have to treat this weekend just like any other. We’re practicing this week on the Ford simulator and just trying to learn all that we can to have the best performance possible. The Roval is such a tricky course and the guys in the playoffs are going to give it their all and push their cars past the limit, so it may provide us opportunities to capitalize on and be there at the end.”
Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Ford Performance Racing School/HighPoint.com Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:
This will be your first Cup Series start at the Roval, but it’s one of your more successful tracks. Are you excited to try it out in this series?
“I’m super excited. The Roval is where I got my first Xfinity win and led a ton of laps there in the Xfinity car in the last two races where it felt like we were the car to beat but threw it away, so I’m excited to get there in the Cup car. The competition is going to be a lot tougher. The other Chase (Elliott) seems to be really good at the Roval, so we’ll see what we can do. I feel like we’ll have a pretty good shot. We’ll have to drive through a lot of cars but, not being in the playoffs, we can do some things strategy-wise to steal some track position. Then I think we’ll be fast enough to stay up there. The road courses have been our strongest all year long, so we’ll continue to build on that and hope to do really well this weekend.”
Cole Custer, Driver of the No. 41 Autodesk Fusion 360/HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing
You had a solid top-10 on the Roval in your first-ever Cup Series race there a year ago this weekend. What do you remember about that day, and do you feel it will have any carryover into this weekend?
“What I remember most is that we had a lot of ups and downs in that race, which is typical on road courses, in general, especially on the Roval and especially on restarts. There’s always a lot going on and the potential for mayhem is always there. The crew stuck with it all race long and we ended up with a top-10 that we could feel good about. And I think one of the bigger positives that came out of that day was that we learned some things with regard to road-course racing that definitely carried on over into this year with all the road-course races we had on the schedule. Coming off of a pretty solid race at Talladega, I can’t wait to get to the Roval, and the team feels the same way.”
Riley Herbst, Driver of the No. 98 Monster Energy Ford Mustang (Xfinity Series)
The No. 98 Monster Energy team has had some success on road courses this year and in the past. What would it mean to get your first win on the Roval at Charlotte?
“Your first win is special no matter what track, but to get it at Charlotte and lock in our spot to the Round of 8 would be awesome. The No. 98 Monster Energy team has worked hard this year, so our goal is to win one before season’s end. This team has been strong on the Roval in the past, and I’ve had some success in leading laps and running up front, so hopefully we can put it all together and end up in victory lane on Saturday.”
SHR Stats
In three career NASCAR Cup Series starts at the Roval, Kevin Harvick has never finished lower than 11th. His best result came in 2019 when he led twice for 34 laps on his way to a third-place finish. Harvick has made a total of 48 NASCAR Cup Series starts on road courses. He has 20 starts at Sonoma, 20 at Watkins Glen, three at the Roval, two on the Daytona road course and one apiece at COTA, Road America and the Indianapolis road course. He has scored two wins – Watkins Glen in 2006 and Sonoma in 2017 – along with 10 top-fives and 24 top-10s with 195 laps led. When Harvick scored his first road-course victory at Watkins Glen in 2006, he had to beat his current team owner to do it. Tony Stewart – the “Stewart” in Stewart-Haas Racing – had won the past two NASCAR Cup Series races at the seven-turn, 2.45-mile road course and was poised to capture a third straight win as he was leading Harvick with four laps to go in the 90-lap race. But Harvick, who had already led once for 24 laps, passed Stewart on lap 87 as the two drag-raced down the frontstretch and into turn one. Harvick held onto the lead despite Stewart in his rearview mirror, earning a margin of victory of .892 of a second.
Sunday’s 109-lap race will be Cole Custer’s 71st Cup Series start and his second on the 2.28-mile, 17-turn Roval. He finished ninth in his Cup Series debut at the track a year ago this weekend for his seventh top-10 of the season en route to capturing Rookie of the Year honors. The finish came in just his second career road-course race in the Cup Series. Custer had 11 road-course outings in the Xfinity Series from 2017 through 2019 that included a pair of outings on the Roval. He finished seventh in 2018 and eighth in 2019.
The first time the Cup Series raced on the Charlotte Roval was in 2018. Aric Almirola started 20th that day and finished 19th, which was good enough to advance him to the next round of the playoffs after a nail-biting final stretch. Last year, he was in a similar position on the Roval but needed to gain 12 positions at the end of that race to move on. The Smithfield Ford driver turned on the jets in the closing laps and came up just five spots and a few seconds short of the next playoff round. Almirola has 28 road-course starts in the NASCAR Cup Series. He has two top-10 finishes with a best of eighth at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, five top-20s at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International with a best finish of 12th, three top-20s on the Charlotte Roval with a best finish of 14th, and a top-12 finish in the non-points Busch Clash Feb. 9 on the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course – his best road-course finish of the year.
The Drive for the Cure 250 on Saturday will mark Riley Herbst’s 72nd career Xfinity Series start and his second on the Roval. After starting 13th in a wet race there last year, Herbst led seven laps before finishing 12th.
Of Special Interest
Be sure to check out our merch hauler at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend! If you can’t attend in person, you can shop anytime at store.stewarthaasracing.com
