Turning Point: COTA rounds out wild-card start to the season with new layout, new tire, new pavement

Here’s what’s happening in the world of NASCAR with Atlanta in the rearview and Circuit of The Americas (Sun., 3:30 p.m. ET, FOX) up next.

THE LINEUP

1️⃣ Twisting the trends: COTA yet another wild-card race in opening stretch

2️⃣ Ring in the new in Austin, where a new configuration, new tire, new asphalt await

3️⃣ Video: Inside Christopher Bell’s sky-high motivation for season ahead

4️⃣ Road-course review: Stacking up the best of the best from 2024

5️⃣ Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage

1. COTA closes out triple play of wild-cards

Trying to draw a bead on who has the early hot hand in the 2025 Cup Series? Good luck, with a pair of superspeedways and a road course as the first three races potentially skewing those trends.

Conventional wisdom used to be that the first five races of the NASCAR Cup Series season would provide a good gauge of how the circuit’s balance of power might tilt. In years past, that span of the schedule typically served up a mix of intermediate tracks, one-milers and perhaps a short track — all kicked off by Daytona’s superspeedway test.

This year, however, pundits may have to let the calendar breathe a bit before drawing definitive conclusions about which teams made the best offseason performance strides, who jumped out to a competitive edge and who the rest of the field might be chasing for the bulk of the 2025 campaign.

For the second straight season, the Cup Series has competed on drafting-style tracks in the first two races of the year, making the turn from Daytona to Atlanta. This year, the chaser that rounds out the opening three-race trifecta is Sunday’s EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at the Circuit of The Americas, the deliciously complex road course in Austin, Texas.

RELATED: Cup Series standings

It’s a schedule that has all the look and feel of a triple play of wild-card events, with 1-mile Phoenix Raceway and 1.5-mile tracks at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway up next. That five-race stretch, though, still holds the possibility of providing a baseline for how the Cup Series field stacks up.

“You know, it used to be like — let’s get like a month in or something. That will probably still be true,” said former Cup Series champ Chase Elliott, the winner of COTA’s inaugural NASCAR race in 2021. “Really, I think by the time you get through — where do we go … from COTA to Phoenix to Las Vegas? I think by the time you get through Vegas, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, truthfully, at that point. So you’ve delayed it a week, basically, with the second speedway and the road course thing.”

Road racing, Elliott acknowledged, isn’t the rarity or write-off that it used to be — not with six of that track type on the 36-race schedule.

“In the past, I would agree that it was kind of an outlier. Well, now, we have 15 of them, it seems like, so they kind of matter, too,” Elliott said, noting the days when Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen International were the Cup Series’ only two road courses. “It used to be that you could get away with just not being a road racer for two weeks a year, and it didn’t really matter because it was in the summer. If you ran good, great. And if you didn’t, no big deal, right? Where now, you have so many of them so you kind of have to embrace. I would argue that that one matters, as well.”

So far, the first two races haven’t produced the striking number of anomalies in the Cup Series standings that the small sample size tends to create. A quick glance at the top of the Cup Series heap isn’t all that wild of a card, with points leader Ryan Blaney just ahead of William Byron and Tyler Reddick in the top three — a trio that ended up in last year’s Championship 4 field.

On the flip side, John Hunter Nemechek and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — both outside the top 20 in last year’s final standings — are in a three-way tie for sixth place with Kyle Larson. Further down, it’s a deep points deficit for three drivers who made last year’s Cup Series Playoffs, with Ty Gibbs 29th, Brad Keselowski 33rd and Chase Briscoe last. Both Gibbs and Keselowski crashed out of last Sunday’s Atlanta race, and Briscoe’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team is in the cellar after a post-Daytona penalty.

This year’s winners haven’t been left-field surprises, either, with Daytona 500 champ Byron joining Atlanta winner Christopher Bell in that group. Both Byron and Bell have won multiple races in each of the last three seasons, and while Bell didn’t have Atlanta on the list of venues where he figured his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team would necessarily thrive, he was bullish on putting his name among the early season front-runners in the first five races and beyond.

“Honestly we’re just getting into the bread and butter of what the 20 car likes,” Bell said post-race at Atlanta. “COTA should be a strong track. Phoenix, Vegas, Darlington, Homestead. All of these tracks coming up in the early part of the season is where we think we can compete for wins and do good, score a lot of points. Atlanta was not one of those race tracks we had circled. It’s very refreshing to be able to get one early in the season, especially one where we didn’t expect to win at. Hopefully, we can keep the ball rolling.”

Circuit of The Americas still qualifies as one of NASCAR’s newer stops on the schedule. Significant changes, however, are ahead for this weekend’s event, which marks just the Cup Series’ fifth trip to the Lone Star State capital.

The city’s motto of “Keep Austin Weird” will describe not only its reputation as a home for eclectic music and culture but will also sum up a new-look course configuration for this weekend’s NASCAR events. Race promoters announced that change last November, shifting from a 3.41-mile full layout to a shorter 2.3-mile “national” circuit for both the Cup Series and Xfinity Series this weekend.

The new shape of the course eliminates the section from Turn 7 through the Turn 11 hairpin on the full layout. The scheduled race distances won’t change as much, with last year’s event going 231.88 miles vs. this year’s 228, but the lap count goes up from 68 to 95. That shift means that the field will rumble past fans’ vantage points more often over the course of the event.

RELATED: Cup entry list: COTA

“I think shortening the track definitely changes quite a few things,” Team Penske’s Austin Cindric said. “The lap count, from a fan standpoint, I think that is more than anything else. How much do you prioritize the other corners that still exist on the race track? Past that, there are still plenty of elements to take away. It is a very unique circuit.”

The adjustments will put a premium on Saturday morning’s extended practice, when the drivers will get a chance to validate their computer simulation testing with real-world track time.

“It’s kind of one of those things where it’s tough because the only thing you can do is simulator work, right, until you can get some eyes on it,” Elliott said. “The good news is that we’ve got some practice next week to understand the reconfiguration. I do not have my head wrapped around it completely at this point. I mean, I know what it’s supposed to look like, but I think until you really get out there and feel it — for me, it’s always hard to kind of understand exactly how things are going to be. And I kind of hate guessing because I don’t want to guess wrong in that situation, so I just kind of look forward to practice, honestly, more than anything. I would have to imagine it will change the racing a little, I would think, just based off the way it’s shaped. So hopefully, it gives more opportunities to get crafty, have some more options, opportunities to pass or just be different. If it does, great. And if it doesn’t, it’ll look like it has for the last few years out there.”

If that’s not enough new, Sunday’s race will be the first on the Circuit of The Americas’ fresh asphalt, the fruit of a repaving project that was completed last September. The resurfacing was the second in a roughly 2 1/2-year span as track officials sought to address the track’s bumpy nature.

That new begets more new, with Goodyear bringing a new tire that’s making its Cup Series debut this weekend. Goodyear officials indicated that the new tire features an updated construction, plus a new compound that emphasizes wear and lap-time falloff.