Kevin Harvick reveals the hardship NASCAR drivers have to go through before the Road Course Cup race

Kevin Harvick has won two road course races in his cup career from the 55 starts he made.

Kevin Harvick reveals the hardship NASCAR drivers have to go through before the Road Course Cup race

Kevin Harvick

NASCAR racing is built around oval tracks, and the cars and drivers train all their lives to be the best at such tracks.  But the sport is not limited to ovals, drivers are deemed to step up their game in Road Course races. Over the years, the number of road course races have increased, and the 7th gen cars are designed in a way that favors driver during such races. Still, the sudden change from oval pack to road course packs in a week is hard on the drivers

The Cup grid is going through such a transition this week as the first road course race of the 2023 season will be hosted at the iconic Circuits of Americas in Texas. Piolets and teams work hard on their road racing skills and left turns. The race becomes much harder, considering the teams are visiting the COTA only the second time in Next-Gen ear and are coming straight from a superspeedway-type race in Atlanta.

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Now Stewart Hass Racing veteran Kevin Harvick who is gearing up for potentially his final Cup race at COTA, explained the hardships of preparing for the weekend. He explained that the first and foremost thing ahead of a Road course race is learning from past notes and learning the track layout. The intense training on the simulators and free practice session also helps them big time.

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“There’s just a lot more time that goes into a road-race week. You have to spend a lot of time in the simulator. You have to spend a lot of time with your previous notes and make sure you have the shift points and all the things that you remember as far as curbs you need to hit and things you don’t need to hit, where you need to be on the racetrack, tire falloff,” Kevin Harvick said.

“You have to have everything memorized before you get there so that the first few laps are valuable because you’re still going to be learning the real-life tolerances of the grip level. And you’re going to have to blend that into also trying to do it in a short amount of time and get something out of those practices to give some feedback about the cars. It’s a different preparation week for the road courses than anything else,” Kevin Harvick added.

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Cup grid also has to hold its ground against champion road course open chartered drivers in COTA

Kimi Raikkonen, Kyle Busch and Jenson Button
Kimi Raikkonen, Kyle Busch and Jenson Button

The track isn’t the only challenge for the Cup drivers on Sunday. They have a reputation list of Road course racers who were the champions in their racing disciplines to defeat. First on the entry is 2007 F1 world champion Kimi Raikkonen, who will drive Trackhouse Racing Project 91 car for a second time.

He is joined by fellow F1 world champion Jenson Button, who will drive for Rick Ware Racing. COTA will be his NASCAR debut. Button is also not a rookie to the Next-Gen car as he has been testing them for a long time to race for HMS’s lemans entry Garage 56.

Four times IMSA champion Jordan Taylor will also make his cup debut. He got the cup calls to drive the No:9 HMS chevy as the team’s full-time driver Chase Elliott is out due to an injury. The No:9 team is among the strongest in road courses, making him a contender on his turf, with only adjusting with the car being a hurdle.

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