NASCAR's Best Road-Course Driver Isn't On The Track

With Chase Elliott out, who will win the first non-oval event of the 2023 season?

As I noted in this Hot Takedown podcast segment long ago, NASCAR’s usual reputation is for making left turns… and then left turns… and then even more left turns.

But every so often, the sport arrives at the kind of track with both left- and right-hand turns: Road courses. And while the same cars run those circuits, it takes very different skills to navigate a road course than, say, a superspeedway.

This is so true that, in the past, teams would bring in so-called “road-course ringers” — professional sportscar or open-wheel drivers who had experience on the types of tracks that NASCAR’s rank and file seldom encountered in the week-to-week. Formula 1 driver Dan Gurney, for instance, is tied for eighth on the Cup Series’ all-time road-course wins list despite running only 16 total races in his entire career at NASCAR’s highest level, because he was just that good of a road racer.

While the trend of road-course ringers has died down a bit over time — the theory being that, in addition to NASCAR’s playoff standings forcing teams to use their regular driver for every race, a generation of younger drivers has played sim racing their entire lives and are better at all types of tracks — we do see a version of this with ex-F1 drivers like Kimi Raikkonen and Jenson Button participating in this weekend’s Circuit of the Americas road-course race.

One notable missing driver at COTA, however, is Chase Elliott, the Hendrick Motorsports star who is still recovering from the broken leg he suffered in a snowboarding accident early this month. It’s a shame in any week, as Elliott is one of the best drivers of this or any generation, but especially during a week like this, because Elliott is essentially a road-course ringer in terms of his skill level on these types of tracks. According to my new Composite Winning Percentage stat, Elliott has a rating of 79.9% in 25 road-course races. Among all modern (since 1972) Cup Series drivers with at least 10 starts on road courses, only Marcos Ambrose (80.6%) ranked higher — and he was another borderline road-course ringer who also happened to be a pretty good full-time NASCAR driver.

What’s really striking is the huge gap between Elliott (79.9%) and the next-highest ranking active driver, Tyler Reddick (69.3%). Of course, Reddick actually outdueled Elliott for his first-ever Cup Series victory on a road course, so you know he has road-course chops:

Reddick also starts today’s race on the front row, alongside Elliott’s Hendrick teammate William Byron (driving the No. 24 car made famous by another standout road-course driver, Jeff Gordon). Because of that and his road-course experience, Reddick is the betting favorite to win, so don’t be surprised to see him take the checkered flag. But it is somewhat ironic that, in Elliott’s absence, the field is a lot more balanced on a road course than it usually would be — even in an era when the typical driver is supposed to be much better at road courses than they were a generation or two ago.

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Filed under: NASCAR