San Diego fills one spot on 2026 NASCAR Cup schedule but questions remain
But many questions remain.
Ben Kennedy, NASCAR executive vice president, chief venue & racing innovation officer, said Wednesday that the 2026 Cup schedule should be out in 'the next few weeks or so.'
Dustin Long,
Here is what has been announced or revealed about the 2026 NASCAR Cup schedule:
Feb. 1 — Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium
Feb. 15 — Daytona 500
May 24 — Coca-Cola 600
June 21 — San Diego/Naval Base Coronado
Nov. 8 — Homestead-Miami Speedway (championship race)
NASCAR recently announced that it will 'pause' the Chicago Street Race and not hold it next year. NASCAR hopes to run that event again in 2027 but its absence next year leaves the July 4 weekend spot open on the NASCAR calendar.
'We've looked at a handful of options for the July 4 weekend,' Kennedy said in response to a question from NBC Sports. ' … Not sure exactly where it's going to land yet, but it is an important part of our schedule.'
The summer Daytona race had been the traditional home for the event on or near July 4 until that race was moved to the regular season finale in 2020. Since then, the July 4 weekend race for Cup has been at Indianapolis (2020), Road America (2021-22) and the Chicago Street Race (2023-25).
Another key element with the schedule is how many street and road course races there will be.
There are six this year: Circuit of the Americas, Mexico City, Chicago Street Race, Sonoma, Watkins Glen and the Charlotte Roval.
Since 2021, there have been at least five road course events on the Cup schedule. In 2021, there were seven such races. The Cup Series had two road course events (Watkins Glen and Sonoma) before the Charlotte Roval was added to the schedule in 2018.
Brad Keselowski has been vocal in the sport having too many road course races, stating on social media earlier this month: 'We went from 2 to 6 Road course races, Possibly 7 next year.
'NASCAR was successfully built as a primarily oval racing series. IMSA was built as the primary road course series in North America. IMSA will always do road racing better than NASCAR and that's ok.
'Yes, TOO Many Road courses in NASCAR.'
He's not alone in that feeling.
'I would love to do a couple a year,' Erik Jones said this month on the optimal number of road course races in a season. 'I was totally happy running (Sonoma) and Watkins Glen. I don't know. I'm probably not the right guy to ask. I grew up as an oval racer. I didn't race a road course until 10 years ago for the first time.
'My opinion is –- this car is not, just hasn't put on as good of a show on road courses that the old car did, to be frank. I think it is fun to go to different places, but I could see us doing (Sonoma), Watkins Glen and one street course. I think you would be hard pressed to find many that wouldn't agree with that.
'We know where this car puts on good races -– the mile-and-a-half stuff is great –- there is plenty of those tracks that we can go back to that are sitting there and primed to race, so I would love to go back to some of those.'
Kennedy said NASCAR is 'keeping a pulse' on the topic.
'We get a lot of feedback, certainly from our partners, from our fans, from the industry, teams and drivers on it,' he said in response to a question from NBC Sports. 'I would say it's bit of a mixed bag. You have some fans that absolutely love the road course racing and would like to see more of it, and then you have others that, conversely, would like to see less of it.
'For us, it's really just finding a good blend. We feel like we're at a good number or around a good number right where you can still have the diversity of being able to go to a number of road courses, some historic ones that we go to, a street course or two, and then still keeping a majority of our events — and especially the ones during the playoffs — as to what fans would typically expect of traditional NASCAR racing and that's oval racing. We're proud of the product we put on from that perspective.
'So that said, we're constantly thinking about it. We're evaluating it, something we're considering for the '26 schedule.'
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