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The Charlotte infield ‘roval’ will be as close as NASCAR comes to street racing, reckons former Champ Car driver AJ Allmendinger.
Earlier this week Allmendinger was among over a dozen Cup drivers testing on the new road course again.
“It’s definitely an interesting track – it’s unique, it has a lot of fast areas, it has some slow areas,” said JTG Daugherty driver Allmendinger.
“Through the infield, it reminds me of my Champ Car days running on a street course; it’s pretty tight back there.”
The 2.28-mile track includes high-speed sections from the circuit’s oval as well as the tight infield segments.
Allmendinger believes drivers are likely to incur damage in the tight sections that will then compromise their handling on the oval corners.
“There’s going to be a lot of contact. Through the infield, it’s fairly narrow. It’s short-track racing in the infield,” he said.
“We’re still running at high speeds on the oval. If you take off a fender, it’s going to be a big deal to your racecar.”
This week’s test featured multiple incidents.
Ryan Blaney slammed into the tyre barrier around Turns 3 and 4 of the infield course and his Penske team was forced to bring out a back-up car.
Hendrick duo Alex Bowman and William Byron both hit barriers on the infield, with Byron’s Chevrolet suffering particularly bad damage.
.@WilliamByron crashes into the tire barrier entering Turn 1 at @CLTMotorSpdwy. pic.twitter.com/FftnMTd25o
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 17, 2018
Blaney’s team-mate Joey Logano called the circuit “fun” and “different to any other racetrack we go to, which I don’t think is a bad thing in any way” and predicted high attrition.
“Not crashing might be the biggest challenge. There’s going to be some areas where we wad some stuff up,” Logano said.
“Being in the playoffs, it’s going to be quite the race.
“Honestly, the biggest challenge is probably going to be just getting through the race. You may see some fast cars get torn up.
“Finishing this thing is priority one. If you do that, you’ll probably have a pretty good shot at winning it.”
The Charlotte race takes place on the final weekend of September.