NASCAR's national series schedule shifts back to Texas Motor Speedway this weekend with more on its mind than cowboy hats, jangling spurs and other Lone Star State tropes. For those on the competition side, the focus will likely zero in on the pavement.
Sunday's O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 (2 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM) for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series will be held one year after the 1.5-mile track debuted its reconfigured, repaved circuit. The project addressed the track's drainage issues and transformed Turns 1 and 2, reducing the banking from 24 to 20 degrees and widening the racing surface from 60 to 80 feet.
MORE: All-time Texas Motor Speedway winnersThe heightened grip level from the fresh asphalt also increased speeds at the already fast Fort Worth venue. Kurt Busch won the Busch Pole Award there last fall with a qualifying record of 200.915 mph.
"Hang on tight. That's all I know," said Darrell Wallace Jr., prepping for his first premier-series start at Texas. "We'll be flying around there."
One year barely registers a blip in the track-aging process, but a variety of competition principals are chipping in to hasten the effect. The goal: To achieve tire wear, multiple grooves and other slip-sliding characteristics of a well-worn track in an effort to promote side-by-side racing.
Goodyear is doing its part, announcing Tuesday that Monster Energy and Xfinity Series teams will compete on a new left-side tire, a development that stemmed from a tire test at the track in January. The tire, which features a new construction and a new compound, is expected to wear more rapidly and dissipate more heat.
RELATED: Monster Energy Series entry list for Texas"This being just the third NASCAR Cup race since the repave, the track surface has not really had the chance to weather in, so to speak," said Greg Stucker, Goodyear's director of racing. "This new left-side tire matches up well with this still-smooth surface and will accomplish our goal of increased wear and laying rubber on the track. That should lead to an increased level of fall-off over the course of a fuel run and a widened racing groove."
Track officials are also putting forth an effort, logging plenty of mileage this week with tire-dragging trucks -- or "Tire Dragon," in equipment-nickname parlance -- to apply rubber to the different lanes.
And drivers have offered their own analysis on social media, watching the track's videos of the Tire Dragon at work and offering pointers on which grooves to target. Speedway officials have shown they're listening, accordingly adjusting their line to rubber in the higher lanes.
"I thought last year the track did a phenomenal job of kind of doing their homework, prep work on the track to where we could run the second groove in both the spring and fall races, which not a lot of tracks do, so I thought they deserved a lot of credit for that," said Brad Keselowski, a two-time Xfinity Series winner at Texas. "And we actually had one of the better repave races we've ever had. That said, I don't know what to expect in the second year."