COTA track “a bit trickier” in NASCAR Cup cars

Trackhouse are the defending winners of this event with Ross Chastain taking the checkered flag in 2022.

Raikkonen made his Cup debut at Watkins Glen last August, starting 27th and finishing 37th after getting collected in incident exiting the bus stop chicane. 

He’s back again this weekend, racing alongside fellow F1 World Champion Jenson Button for the first time since the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix.

In qualifying, they were only 0.033s apart in lap times with Raikkonen qualifying 22nd and Button 24th.

The Finnish driver spoke with the media on Saturday about his continued learning curve as he goes up against stock car racing’s best.

“It’s the same track but it feels a lot different in an F1 car to a NASCAR car,” said Raikkonen, who earned his final F1 win in the 2018 United States Grand Prix at COTA. “A lot of the corners are more kind of straights in F1 because of the downforce. It gets a bit trickier in a NASCAR car. It’s nice to be back and it’s a lovely place to be here in Texas. Let’s hope we can do well. We will try to improve from yesterday and today and see what we do in the race.”

He has two experienced teammates to lean on with Chastain and Daniel Suarez, who both earned victories at road courses last year. Post-session briefings differ from what he was accustomed to while in Formula 1, calling it a more relaxed atmosphere.

“It’s different. In F1, it’s a lot of meetings and a lot of other stuff,” he explained. “Here, it’s a bit more relaxed. You kind of have the meetings, but it’s a different way. I don’t have the experience with the cars and all the details, so we had a meeting yesterday as a group, as a whole team, and it’s nice to listen and assess what they thought about the car and what they should do with the car. I think it sounds like everybody has similar difficulties with the cars here. The rear seems to be the tricky part in the highest bit but it’s good to have teammates and to hear what they’re saying and get some advice from them.”

The cars remain the same from his last Cup appearance at Watkins Glen, but the rules package has changed. NASCAR has taken a significant amount of downforce off the cars for events at short tracks and road courses. That was immediately noticeable to Raikkonen during Friday’s practice.

“I haven’t driven any racecars…