NASCAR will return to Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas in 2025, as the picturesque road course will serve as the third stop on the NASCAR Cup Series, and NASCAR Xfinity Series schedules. However, in 2025, you’ll notice a difference at Circuit of the Americas.
On Wednesday, Speedway Motorsports announced that for the 2025 season, NASCAR will utilize the Circuit of the Americas “National Course” layout, which features a 2.3-mile course length, and 20 turns.
Previously, NASCAR has run on the Full Course Layout at Circuit of the Americas, which is also 20 turns, but much longer overall. The Full Course Layout at COTA has a total length of 3.41 miles.
In shrinking the overall length of the track, Speedway Motorsports will add laps to the total of next year’s events. The NASCAR Cup Series race will bump up from 68 laps to “approximately” 100 laps in 2025. Marcus Smith, the President and CEO of Speedway Motorsports, feels the change will be a welcomed one for the fans.
“The move to the National Course will make a great race experience even better for our fans with more laps and more action,” Speedway Motorsports President and CEO Marcus Smith said. “Fans will have more laps to cheer for their favorite driver from the best seats, and the action will come faster with lap times reduced by roughly a minute. The National Course and its new pavement will provide the drivers, teams, and crew chiefs with a fresh look and a new challenge after running the Full Course the last four years at COTA.”
The layout change will remove approximately a mile of the former layout, which included Turns 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 of the Full Course Layout.
2025 will make the fifth consecutive season that NASCAR travels to Circuit of the Americas, and this will be the first time that a layout other than the full-course layout has been used.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series Focused Health 250 at Circuit of the Americas is set for Saturday, March 1, while the NASCAR Cup Series Echo Park Automotive Grand Prix at COTA will run on Sunday, March 2.
