NASCAR will utilize the shorter, “national” course at Circuit of The Americas next season for its Cup Series and Xfinity Series events.
The course change was announced Wednesday and will see teams go from running the 3.41-mile full course layout to the 2.3-mile national course, which eliminates approximately one mile from the backside of the Austin, Texas road circuit. It will change the lap time to roughly one minute less based on simulation.
But there will still be 20 turns. The national course begins at the exit of the esses and returns to the traditional course at the end of the backstretch.
“The move to the national course will make a great race experience even better for our fans with more laps and more action,” Speedway Motorsports President and CEO Marcus Smith said. “Fans will have more laps to cheer for their favorite driver from the best seats, and the action will come faster with lap times reduced by roughly a minute. The national course and its new pavement will provide the drivers, teams and crew chiefs with a fresh look and a new challenge after running the full course the last four years at COTA.”
The length of the Cup Series race will go from 68 laps to approximately 100 laps.
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NASCAR visits COTA for the fifth time in 2025. It will be the first time on a repaved racetrack, which was done after this year’s visit.
“It’s going to be like basically going to a new track, a new town, new area,” said Ross Chastain, who ran the new course layout on iRacing. “It flows together nice, and (Turn) 12 (of the full course) will really change since we don’t have that long backstretch. Once I get to (Turn) 13, though, it’s all going to be the same. I’ll get my normal speed I was at last year. Gosh, this place is awesome.”