Turn 8, Track Limits Throw Drivers for a Loop at COTA

AUSTIN, Texas — This weekend’s races at Circuit of the Americas have introduced new pavement and new track limits, the latter of which has thrown drivers for a loop in all three series. That is in addition to a treacherous turn 8, where the fastest way around is to have two wheels in the dirt, which in turn, clutters the pavement for that section of the track.

Multiple drivers have introduced concern about that section of the track for race day, saying that something needs to be fixed or that NASCAR needs to install a curb in that section.

“Hiindsight 20/20, I think we could have probably discussed some better options for turn 8,” Austin Cindric said. “I think obviously we don’t have a lot of time to do much else, but there’s dirt everywhere.

“It’s why I feel like you don’t see cars in the second round [of qualifying] go faster or rerunning and going faster because it’s so much dirt through there. Why that’s different from last year, hard to say. It could be the same dirt, could be different dirt; looked really soft. But I think we just need like a Martinsville-style curb there and then that just completely eliminates that.”

“We got to do something about the dirt through [turn] 8, whether we bolt the curb down to it or something, we just can’t be dropping our right side tires off and making the racetrack just dirty,” Corey LaJoie said. “So, we need to figure something out overnight.”

“It’s a mess over [in turn 8] for sure,” Denny Hamlin said. “You know, it’s just a product of the paint having so much grip that we’ve got to be down there. But yeah, it’s just a weird track configuration thing that is forcing guys to go down in the mud.”

“I would’ve just put the curbs back in,” Michael McDowell said. “I don’t know why we don’t have the curbs in everywhere. There’s no reason to not have the curbs.”

As for the track limits, shortcutting a section of the course will net a driver a trip pit road for a pass-through penalty, or a 30-second time penalty if the infraction occurs on the final lap of the race.

Todd Gilliland was one of the first NASCAR Cup Series drivers to get busted on Saturday (March 23), as he had to put up a second qualifying lap after his first one was taken off the board.

“It’s a bad mistake on my end, and it was…