What Sprint Cup tracks are road courses?

What tracks in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series are road courses?

While NASCAR takes place mostly in ovals at speedways and super speedways, there are a couple of exceptions to the schedule every single season. Twice a year, NASCAR will have two road-course races in the Sprint Cup Series.

Those two courses are Sonoma and Watkins Glen. The first road-course race of the season takes place at Sonoma in June. In the wine country of California, Sonoma is always one of the more exciting road courses, for it’s big u-shaped turn near the finish line.

The second road-course race of the season takes place in August at Watkins Glen International in New York. Watkins Glen is a notable course for the multiple turns on the track and the tight narrow windows for passing that drivers have in the race. It’s a race that takes place near the beginning of the chase and offers the road-course specialists in the Sprint Cup Series a chance to get in the chase.

These courses typically give a chance to those specialists and have been capitalized on before. In 2014, AJ Allmendinger won a road race at Watkins Glen to earn himself a chance to compete for a Sprint Cup Championship. In 2015, it looked like Allmendinger had the strongest car at Sonoma and Watkins Glen, but ran into bad luck both times with car trouble and lost his lead.

What makes these road courses so great is that it shakes up the balance of things. With the challenges that these two road courses bring to the table, many believe that one of them should be in the chase to balance out the championship schedule even further.