RaceSheets NASCAR DFS Preview: Coca-Cola 600

Following Kyle Larson’s victory at North Wilkesboro, NASCAR makes the short trek across North Carolina to Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. Therefore, let’s wrap up action from this past Sunday’s All-Star Race, review numbers from last year at Charlotte, and assess some DFS expectations for this Sunday evening at Charlotte Motor Speedway. 

All-Star Race Wrap-Up

This goes against our Western way of thinking, but something doesn’t always have to be an “either/or” conundrum. Sometimes, we can have a “both/and” situation, and that’s precisely what North Wilkesboro presented NASCAR fans Sunday evening. 

With somewhere in the realm of $20 million invested back into North Wilkesboro, the track was definitely revitalized and ended up being the perfect venue for an All-Star event. The historicity of North Wilkesboro, combined it with its compact size (max seating resembling a basketball arena and not a football stadium), gave the aesthetic of an important event as the seats were packed and the old school build of North Wilkesboro meant the fans were nearly on top of the catch fence along the front stretch. Whether it be the pit-crew challenge Friday, the Saturday evening heat races, or the actual races Sunday — the stands were packed like sardines and seeing that on television was great to see. If this same size crowd had shown up to a venue like Texas for the same festivities, the open seats would have made the weekend feel like a failure — again. 

That said, while NWB is great for the fans, the actual track needs the weather to cooperate in order to produce great racing at this point. With 40-plus-year-old pavement, if the racing isn’t held in the middle of the day under the heat of a 90-plus-degree day, racing is going to go single-file and a driver can outright dominate the race giving the fans a snoozer to cap off their weekend. The best solution, assuming SMI isn’t going to totally repave the entire track, would be to just repave the corners so that drivers have incentive to go hard into the corners and hope to pass that way. 

However, what the immediate future for NWB is will be determined. As things stand, NWB could just be used to host the All-Star event next season, it could become a regular, points-paying race in 2023, or it could fall off the Cup calendar completely (the least likely scenario) and be used solely by the Trucks, Xfinity, ASA and CARS Tour. 

Charlotte Motor Speedway

From one historic track to another, NASCAR goes from the weathered 0.625-mile short track in North Wilkesboro to the 1.5-mile intermediate at Charlotte Motor Speedway. While not nearly as old as NWB, racing has been going on at Charlotte since 1960 with a repave as recently as 2007. With 16 years since the last repave, the track surface is a bit on the older side matching the somewhat abrasive Las Vegas Motor Speedway in surface age, however, it doesn’t carry the same moniker of tire wear as Las Vegas. Perhaps the arid climate of Las Vegas has contributed to the tire wear of LVMS while Charlotte is situated in the pristine climate of the Metrolinas. 

When the racing calendar turns to Memorial Day weekend, it’s time for the annual tradition of racing under the lights at Charlotte the Sunday night prior to the holiday. However, this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill race at a cookie-cutter intermediate. The Coca-Cola 600, or the World 600 as it was known by for decades, is the longest race — in terms of total length that NASCAR will hold all year. A 600-mile race, taking anywhere from four to five hours, is the ultimate test of will as well as equipment. 

This length factor, combined with the historicity of Charlotte being the forerunner for all intermediate tracks afterward, gives the Coca-Cola 600 the notoriety of being one of the four “Crown Jewel” races on the NASCAR calendar — up there in terms of importance with the Daytona 500 and the Southern 500 at Darlington. 

Expectations for the Coca-Cola 600

Typically, Charlotte isn’t that chaotic a track. When you take an intermediate track, hold the race in the Carolinas in late May, with the majority of the event happening after the sun has set, many of the factors that could render the race a mess get removed. The weather is generally nice, the grip increases as the temperatures dip and the moon rises, and the majority of the cars that fail to finish due so to mechanical failures as the 600 miles put their equipment through the wringer. 

However, that was not the case last year. Last year’s rendition of the Coca-Cola 600 saw its highest number of cautions (18) since the 2005 race which had 22 cautions. Compared to the 2021 iteration which had just four yellow flags thrown, this race was everything you wouldn’t expect from a modern-day Coca-Cola 600. 

Part of the issue for drivers, that Sunday evening, was their tires and the number of single-car incidents that brought out the yellow flag. For the race, there were 11 separate single-car spins with the bulk of them happening in turn four. However, not to be outdone, the race also saw four multi-car accidents on laps 19, 193 (a wreck that collected 14 drivers), 347 and finally lap 406 which extended this race to 413 laps and two overtimes. What wasn’t apparent then was teams testing the limits of tire pressures and even after seeing it become a revolving door of issues all evening, teams continued to press the envelope to the point of only two of the 17 drivers that failed to finish the race did so because of mechanical failures. 

Thus, is last year’s melee what we should expect Sunday evening in Charlotte? Not necessarily as the weather looks to be cooperative plus Goodyear should go out of their ways to ensure teams don’t try to dance too close to the fire once again. Furthermore, at Las Vegas earlier this season, the race only saw two real-life cautions, but the Pennzoil 400 did under overtime. It’s a tad concerning to see that Kansas, Charlotte’s sister venue, saw 11 cautions but air and track temperatures produced a hot, slick track in Kansas City, Kan. — both things we shouldn’t see Sunday evening in Charlotte.