After taking a visit to five straight oval tracks to open up the 2024 season, the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series faceoff with the grueling Circuit of the Americas (COTA).
Located in Austin, TX, the 3.426-mile road course hosted its first race in 2012, opening its gates to Formula 1 for the return of the United States Grand Prix. A myriad of racing disciplines have made a stop at COTA, including IndyCar and V8 Supercars before NASCAR made its debut in 2021 with all three national series.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin survived the attrition by managing his tire wear better than anyone else in Bristol last week, leading to his 52nd career Cup Series victory. His closest competition was teammate Martin Truex Jr., who snuck by Hamlin in dense lapped traffic with less than 20 laps remaining.
Hamlin battled back in the remaining laps, snatching the lead away from Truex with 15 laps to go before punching his ticket to the NASCAR Playoffs, becoming the fifth different winner of 2024.
Drivers start the race by taking the green flag on the front stretch before throttling up the hill into the hard braking zone of turn 1. Once the field cranks through the tricky left-hander, they will shoot down the hill and turn right at the bottom to enter the Esses.
Snaking left and right, the cars require great balance through this section that bleeds into the sweeping right-hander of turn 6. Turn 7 creates issues by being a downhill left corner that shoots drivers uphill yet again.
From there drivers will do a slow, right-left complex up the hillside that ends at the summit. The downhill kink of turn 10 gives drivers plenty of entry speed into the treacherous turn 11 that leads to the back straight.
The back straight at COTA promotes a lot of passing opportunities, sitting at a length of .73-miles (longer than last week’s circuit in Bristol at .533-miles.)
After reaching their highest speeds, the drivers need to jump on the brakes for the left-hander of turn 12 to begin the final section of the course.
Modeled after the famous stadium section of Germany’s Hockenheimring, this final section swings right through turns 13 and 14 before immediately emptying out into the awkward left of turn 15.
The triple right-hander of turns 16, 17, and 18 push the grip of the car to its limits, emptying into the sharp left of turn 19 where drivers use the runoff on the exit to fly into another sharp left of turn 20 to get a strong run up the hill back into turn 1.
Circuit of the Americas has seen its fair share of adverse weather since it joined the NASCAR calendar three years ago, so let’s take a look at this weekend’s forecast.
The Weather & Fast Facts
A deluge for the ages marred the inaugural Cup race in Austin, forcing drivers and teams to apply rain tires to their cars during rainfall for the first time in the series’ long history.
COTA’s second NASCAR Cup race was the first road course race for the NextGen car, and after a hectic sequence of restarts, Ross Chastain shoved AJ Allmendinger through turn 19 and into Alex Bowman, giving Chastain his maiden Cup win.
A familiar problem from the previous year’s race reared its ugly head again for the 2023 iteration of the event. NASCAR removed the stage cautions from the race, allowing for a strategy race to naturally develop.
The race showed a lot of promise before Brad Keselowski’s car stalled in the Esses with 12 laps to go, triggering a flurry of yellows due to contact on the ensuing restarts that scattered debris on every inch of asphalt.
Tyler Reddick dominated the day and held onto the lead through the calamity to notch his first victory for 23XI Racing, locking his #45 team into the playoffs.
The rain-shortened 2021 event took place in May, and if you’re familiar with my almanac entries, I only include the weather from the last 10 years on the fourth Sunday of March. Therefore, 2021’s wet weather will not be considered.
Over the past decade, the rain visited the Lone Star State’s best race course three times, all three instances saw the rain end before 10am local time, long before Sunday’s initial green flag scheduled for 3:30pm CT.
The average high in the same time span has been a refreshing 76°F while the low averages out to 54°F. Compared that to Sunday’s forecast, the high will be a bit lower at 71°F but a higher low of 65°F.
The racing at COTA has been unpredictable and full of carnage, slowing the field with an average of seven cautions for 14 caution laps. Last year’s race was particularly egregious, extending the time elapsed to a whopping 3 hours, 30 minutes, and 32 seconds.
With any luck, the fans won’t witness the same chaos and instead will be treated to a great race with battles all over the track.
The track’s 20 turns produce a bevy of passing opportunities with the three COTA races averaging 2,823 green-flag passes and the lead changing hands 13 times over what is supposed to be a 68-lap affair with stage breaks at lap 16, lap 31, and the run to the finish will be the 38-lap final stage.
With the weather presenting little-to-no issues for this weekend, let’s move onto the betting favorites for our trip to Texas’ state capital.
The Odds
Crunching numbers for this race proved easy as there are only three races to look over, but the lack of statistics makes analysis and projections a much more difficult ordeal.
Thankfully, the oddsmakers at BetMGM have given me a short list of drivers to watch out for on Sunday, starting with defending winner of this race, Tyler Reddick.
The driver of the #45 Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry TRD cruises into this weekend at (+400) with loads of confidence, dominating last year’s race by leading a race-high 41 laps on his way to his first win of 2023.
Over the first month of the season, Reddick’s results have seen highs of second at Las Vegas and lows of 29th at Daytona and 30th at both Atlanta and Bristol last week.
Rolling off third tomorrow, the Corning, California native looks to cement himself as a true title threat this season, and an early win at COTA is nothing short of a golden opportunity to make a statement.
This weekend’s pole sitter William Byron (+400) has failed to make much noise since his Daytona 500 victory last month, a 10th-place finish at Las Vegas representing his only other top-10 of the season.
Hendrick Motorsports knows how to make a fast car for this long and flowing course. Byron spent much of last year at COTA within arm’s length of Reddick but wasn’t able to catch him as the race came to a close.
If crew chief Rudy Fugle and Byron can keep up with the race track and stay up front, Byron could be the first driver to two wins for the third consecutive season.
Sandwiched between the two previous drivers is second-place starter Ty Gibbs (+400). The sophomore driver makes his second trip to Austin this weekend after earning a ninth-place result last season.
Gibbs’ 2024 has seen the 21-year-old out of Charlotte, NC take a big leap, pushing his name further up the ticker seemingly every weekend, even leading a 137 laps at Bristol before drifting back to ninth.
Gibbs’ #54 Monster Energy Toyota Camry TRD appeared to be rather sporty in practice and qualifying along with most of the Toyota fleet. With tire wear less of an issue at COTA, I expect Gibbs to keep his car in the mix for the win, and this week could be when he collects his first Cup Series victory.
Christopher Bell (+800) has been on a heater to kickoff his fourth season at Joe Gibbs Racing.
A win at Phoenix helped wipe away two straight finishes outside the top-30, and he looked poised to make it two-in-a-row at Bristol before tire wear got the best of him, ending the day hanging onto the last spot in the top-10.
Though Bell’s past performances leave much to be desired, he is a proven driver that knows how to seal the deal on courses with left and right turns, winning at the Daytona Road Course and Charlotte Roval. He rolls off fourth today with a terrific chance to grab win #2 of 2024.
The final occupant of the top-5 in odds is Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott (+1200). The inaugural winner of this event, Elliott returns to Austin for the first time since 2022 due to the leg injury that sidelined him last spring.
The 2020 Cup champ hasn’t finished outside the top-20 this season, yet he only earned his first top-10 last week.
Elliott, the winner of the most road course races in the series today, hasn’t visited victory lane at a road course since Road America all the way back in July 2021. That said, Elliott wants to end his 39-race winless drought; what better place to do that than COTA?
Other notable odds are: Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain (+1600), Daniel Suárez (+6000), and Shane van Gisbergen (+1200); Texas native Chris Buescher (+6000); and 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace (+5000) and Kamui Kobayashi (+8000).
Writer’s Pick
There are just three drivers with top-10s in every COTA Cup race to this point: Ross Chastain, Tyler Reddick, and Alex Bowman.
Much like teammate Elliott, Bowman is in the midst of an extended winless streak (66 races), dating back to the spring Las Vegas race in 2022. Since that win, a concussion in 2022 and a broken back in 2023 sidelined the Tucson, AZ native for several races both seasons, ruining any championship aspirations.
The #48 Ally racing team, led by crew chief Blake Harris, entered this season with clearer minds, nearly leading to Bowman’s first Daytona 500 victory and a guaranteed Playoff spot with the whole regular season ahead of them.
Had Chastain not bulldozed through AJ Allmendinger at COTA in 2022, Bowman probably owns an EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix trophy, but today might finally be the day for the Showman as long as he survives the rodeo.
(Top Photo Credit: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
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