Following NASCAR’s 2025 schedule release on Thursday, drivers shared largely positive opinions at the track at Darlington. However, with some new tracks on the roster – or at least new for recent years – some also expressed interest in visiting a wide list of other tracks in the future.
Noah Gragson explained that NASCAR’s schedule is already very diverse. It features something for every type of fan: from city-center road courses in Mexico City and Chicago for urban street-racing fans to two new short ovals in the sport’s North Carolina heartland to appeal to the sport’s more traditional fans.
However, he still had a few suggestions. Multiple Australian Supercars stars have competed in NASCAR at some level, most notably including Cup Series race winners Marcos Ambrose and Shane van Gisbergen, but also recently drivers like Cam Waters and Brodie Kostecki.
With all that interest, Gragson suggested that NASCAR might benefit from a trip to Australia to grow its fanbase down under.
“I don’t know if this would ever happen, but it would be kind of cool to go to Australia and check it out,” Gragson said.
“I don’t know where else they would go, I look at it more from a standpoint of covering different regions. Maybe in the Northwest, I know there’s a lot of great racecar drivers that come out of there and there’s a lot of race fans.
“You’ve got the west coast, maybe a Southern California track – I wish Fontana was still a thing because we get a lot of people out there. And then kind of all the way around, maybe the north Midwest, like Wisconsin.
“There’s a lot of great tracks out there, I don’t know if they’d be able to host Xfinity or Cup, but it definitely would be cool to expand into those markets for sure,” Gragson summed up his philosophy.
Likewise, Carson Hocevar said he’s been lobbying for short ovals in North Carolina for years and was gratified to see both Bowman Gray and Rockingham added to the schedule even after North Wilkesboro was restored and added a few years ago.
“I don’t want to get greedy right now, they’ve done a pretty good job right now, so I’m just going to let them do it,” said Hocevar.
Other drivers had some very specific tracks in mind with a very big range between them that exemplifies the drivers’ backgrounds more than anything.
Austin Cindric, who comes from a road course background, wants, unsurprisingly enough, to see well-known road courses like Laguna Seca in picturesque Monterey, California make an appearance.
“I’ve driven a lot of racetracks, so I feel like that list is pretty long,” he said of his list of dream tracks. “But I feel like being able to shake up the schedule more and more – you see it with these first-time events, you see people watching it because it is something new and different and they don’t know how to anticipate it.
“For example, if I was to say a track that I really like driving on like Laguna Seca, that’s a track I think anyone who’s ever played a racing video game has driven on so I think that’s a relatable track. Things like that, I feel like if you’re able to continue to every different race fan that we have because we do have a pretty diverse fanbase as far as motorsports is concerned.”
Similarly unsurprisingly, Chase Briscoe, who started out as a dirt sprint car driver, wants to see NASCAR visit more dirt tracks.
I would love to go to Eldora, just any of the dirt races would be nice. And I do think Canada would be cool to go to. Outside that, I don’t know, definitely a dirt race though. I just feel like we need a dirt race in the Cup Series.
And for road course ace Michael McDowell, who’s raced in IndyCar and IMSA?
“Spa,” he said decisively. “Spa would be great. It would just be so cool for our racecars, with long straightaways and braking zones, and I think that would be really neat.”
That’s in reference to Spa Francorchamps in Belgium, the longest circuit on the Formula One calendar which features a harrowing section of fast turns up a hill before the fastest straight that have long struck fear into the hearts of F1 drivers.
McDowell might be the only NASCAR driver who would enjoy that challenge.
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