The Cup Series has competed at two Superspeedways, two short tracks, an intermediate track and now they get to take their show to the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) for some road course racing. The field is stacked this week with Shane Van Gisbergen, AJ Allmendinger and Kamui Kobayashi entering the race. This is one of the most competitive fields we have seen in a road course race, so there are plenty of good choices for our Fantasy NASCAR lineups Sunday. The EchoPark Texas Grand Prix can be seen Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
The Cup Series will use the new short track /road course aero package at COTA this week. This is the same package that was used at Phoenix. Most of the drivers said the new aero package did not make a huge impact to the racing at Phoenix. I doubt it will change the racing at COTA this week as well. The driver’s who typically run up front at the road courses, should be up front Sunday.
COTA is a unique road course. What makes road course racing fun to watch is the way the drivers beat and bang on each other as they fight for position through the corners. That is not the case at COTA. The racing tends to get spread out and we see one driver lead a lot of laps. NASCAR will try their best to tighten the field this week, but I expect two drivers to lead most of the laps Sunday. That has been the trend at COTA.
I used the driver rankings from the race at COTA last year and the race in 2022. The race at COTA in 2021 was a mess because of the rain, so I am not using that data for the rankings this week. I also used the average finishing position and average green flag speed from the last two races at COTA. I added in the driver rankings and average finishing position from the road course races in 2023. This should give us enough data to predict who the fast drivers will be Sunday.
Here are the Driver Rankings for the EchoPark Texas Grand Prix …
| 1. TYLER REDDICK |
| 2. SHANE VAN GISBERGEN |
| 3. CHASE ELLIOTT |
| 4. WILLIAM BYRON |
| 5. ROSS CHASTAIN |
| 6. ALEX BOWMAN |
| 7. AUSTIN CINDRIC |
| 8. MICHAEL MCDOWELL |
| 9. KYLE BUSCH |
| 10. TY GIBBS |
| 11. AJ ALLMENDINGER |
| 12. CHRIS BUESCHER |
| 13. MARTIN TRUEX JR. |
| 14. CHRISTOPHER BELL |
| 15. DANIEL SUAREZ |
| 16. KYLE LARSON |
| 17. DENNY HAMLIN |
| 18. TODd GILLILAND |
| 19. KAMUI KOBAYASHI |
| 20. CHASE BRISCOE |
| 21. RYAN BLANEY |
| 22. AUSTIN DILLON |
| 23. JOEY LOGANO |
| 24. ERIK JONES |
| 25. NOAH GRAGSON |
| 26. RYAN PREECE |
| 27. RICKY STENHOUSE JR. |
| 28. COREY LAJOIE |
| 29. BUBBA WALLACE |
| 30. BRAD KESELOWSKI |
| 31. HARRISON BURTON |
| 32. JOHN H. NEMECHEK |
| 33. JOSH BERRY |
| 34. CARSON HOCEVAR |
| 35. DANIEL HEMRIC |
| 36. JUSTIN HALEY |
| 37. ZANE SMITH |
| 38. KAZ GRALA |
| 39. TIMMY HILL |
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