The Round of 8 is drawing to a close this weekend with the second trip to Charlotte this year. Well sort of. The race, the Bank of America ROVAL 400, is at Charlotte Motor Speedway but it’s not just the oval, it’s the road course combining the oval and the infield road layout. In a similar fashion to the Daytona Road Course, the drivers will drive most of the NASCAR oval while entering and exiting a road section off the front stretch before they get to normal NASCAR Turn 1. All-in-all the layout is just over two and a quarter miles per lap and it’s one of the longer road races with 109 laps for the scheduled distance.

Tire Notes:

The tires on the cars this year, for both Xfinity and Cup, are the same ones that have been run on the Charlotte Roval for all previous races at this track as well as being used on the Indy Road Course for both series in August. In addition to the slicks, Goodyear is also bringing wet tires, ones with treads, in case rain starts during the race, which is forecast on Saturday right now. These tires were used last year at the Charlotte Roval as well as at COTA earlier this year.

Strategy Notes:

For road courses, and this being the seventh one for the Cup series this year, we’re well-versed in the builds we like, however this week it’s a tad different. In the last three races at the Roval there have been multiple drivers to lead 20 or more laps with the highest total being 47. There have also been at least two drivers to get double-digit fastest laps in the last five Roval-type races (Charlotte and Daytona). I see this to point out that dominator points can make a bit of a difference here compared to other road courses in which the lap total is simply too small to worry about them. However, the biggest factor in scoring this week will be PD for sure, especially with how the field is setting up with starting spots. Over the last five Roval-type races, an average of nearly 13 drivers a race have posted six or more spots of PD and of those, nearly eight a race have posted double-digit position differential marks. Chaos will ensue to be sure as it usually does here for a variety of reasons but also because it’s an elimination race and every point matters for those below or close to the cut line. With calamity in mind, it would be a good week to play a bit heavier on GPPs rather than cash, not to mention there are chalk cash plays throughout the board, just listen to the Podcast and you’ll hear a few.

Facts To Know

  • Four drivers in the field top 100 in average Driver Rating in the last five Roval-type races but no driver is over 90-percent in top-15 rate.
  • Only 28-percent of the top-10 finishers in the last five of these races started outside the top-12 spots.
  • Cautions will be a bit easier to come by here simply because of the type of track that it is and that unlike other road courses, there is less run-off area on most of the layout.
  • Four drivers have finished in the top-10 at least 80-percent of the time in the last five Roval races.
  • Six of the top-10 scoring spots on DK have come inside the top-13 starting spots while nine of the top-10 on FD came from there.

The table below shows the number of drivers to reach each stat-type over the last five Talladega races with Race 1 being the most recent.

 RaceRaceRaceRaceRace 
 12345AVG
Positive Place Differential181918221919.2
Six+ Place Differential Spots171210111312.6
Double-Digit Place Differential1373697.6
Double-Digit Fast Laps222322.2
20+ Laps Led121321.8
50+ Laps Led000000
100+ Laps Led000000

For the tables below:

* The DFS Scoring Table: Race 1 is the most recent race in the sample size with Race 5 being the earliest. We are using the Last 5 Roval races for the data.