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EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix Pre-Race Report

Event: EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix (Round 6 of 36)

Time/Date: 3:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, March 24

Location: Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas

Layout: 3.426-mile, 20-turn road course

Laps/Miles: 68 laps/231.88 miles

Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 15 laps / Stage 2: 15 laps / Final Stage: 38 laps

TV/Radio: FOX / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

SHR Fast Facts:

– Briscoe has 19 career road-course starts in the NASCAR Cup Series with five top-10 finishes spread across COTA (sixth in 2021), Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (sixth in 2021), Watkins Glen (ninth in 2021), the Charlotte Roval (ninth in 20222) and the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (sixth in 2023).

Across the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, ARCA Menards Series and NASCAR K&N Series, Gragson has made a total of 37 road-course starts – three in Cup, 21 in Xfinity, two in Trucks, one in ARCA and 10 in K&N – amassing four wins, 16 top-fives and 27 top-10s with 161 laps led.

– Preece’s most recent road-course outing resulted in an 11th-place finish last October on the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway Roval and he is poised to navigate both right and left turns again this weekend at COTA. His best road-course finish in the Cup Series was his ninth-place effort after qualifying sixth on the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course in February 2021, driving for JTG Daugherty Racing.

– Josh Berry and the NASCAR Cup Series field heads to Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, for the first road-course race on the 2024 schedule. It will be Berry’s first Cup Series start on a serpentine-style track, but he has made two starts at COTA in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Most recently, the 33-year-old Cup Series rookie notched a top-10 result in his JR Motorsports entry in the Xfinity Series race there last March, crossing the finish line eighth in just his second start there. Berry has 15 starts on road courses in the Xfinity Series, nabbing four top-five results, nine top-10s, an average starting position of 14.4 and an average finish of 12.3.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS:

WHAT OUR DRIVERS ARE SAYING:

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse

How would you rate yourself as a road-course driver?

“I feel like I’m above average. I’ve definitely had way more success in the lower series compared to Cup, where I’ve been kind of hit-or-miss. We’d run really, really good, or we were just off. Truthfully, I feel like the NextGen car has definitely hurt me quite a bit on the road-course side. I feel like the old car with just how badly it drove, you were always slipping and sliding around, it didn’t want to stop. I feel like this NextGen car certainly has closed up the gap. The guys who were typically off on road courses are definitely closer because the NextGen car is just easier to drive on the road courses – it stops better, it turns better, it just does everything better. I feel like I’ve been good on road courses from a speed standpoint, just need to find that little bit more to finally seal the deal on a road course.”

Noah Gragson, Driver of the No. 10 Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang Dark Horse

Some guys like road courses, others don’t. Where do you stand when it comes to competing on road courses?

“We used to just have two or three, or maybe only one on the Truck schedule, and my thinking was, ‘Oh man, this’ll be cool, I’ll get to do something different.’ Now there are five or six road courses – at one point, there were seven on the schedule – so it’s a big chunk of our season. You have to be good at it, but I’d also say it’s just another race where you have to carry the same amount of intensity. It felt a little more unique and special when there was just a limited number of road courses.”

Ryan Preece, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse

You’ve had your share of success on road courses in your career. How do you approach learning and improving your performance on road courses, especially considering the unique challenges that this style of track creates?

“Road courses somewhat resemble short-track racing in terms of how you approach braking, so adapting to this style of racing has come with a baseline given my background. Channeling into that and utilizing the tools at your fingertips is what you have to do to be successful. I enjoy the challenges that this style of racing presents, and I’m certainly looking forward to COTA, as it’s a track where I enjoy racing.”

Josh Berry, Driver of the No. 4 Overstock.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse

What is the most challenging part of COTA? Where can you make the biggest gains?

“Like I said before, learning the braking zones there is important – there are some high-speed portions that you can lose a lot of time in if you aren’t good in that section. It’s cool, though, because a lot of the course flows together, right? Like, how the corners lead into one another. It’s going to be important for me to learn how to exit one corner and then enter the next, and how they flow from one to the next so I can make the best laps I can.”