MOORESVILLE, N.C. (May 1, 2025) – Hybrid racing is on display this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. But it’s not the cars that feature a blend of technologies, it’s the racetrack.
“Texas is kind of like a hybrid between Kansas, Vegas and Charlotte,” said NASCAR Cup Series driver Cody Ware, referring to three other 1.5-mile ovals the Cup Series visits. “And to take it a step further, it’s kind of similar to Darlington where you’re probably not going to have your balance happy in both ends of the racetrack because they’re so wildly different. You might get the car handling well in (turns) three and four, but you’re not going to like what it’s doing in (turns) one and two.”
Ahead of the 2017 season, Texas’ 1.5-mile oval and its pit lane underwent a complete repave, going with a granite-based asphalt compound in place of its original limestone-based asphalt. This work included a reprofiling of turns one and two, where the banking in those corners was decreased by four degrees, knocking it down to 20 degrees. The change made more racing surface available, with the track width expanding from 60 feet to 80 feet. Turns three and four, however, remained the same, maintaining its 24-degree banking and 60-foot width.
This hybrid layout with attributes of other facilities has made Texas unique. Ware’s notion that it also contains a hint of Darlington is apt, as that venerable South Carolina racetrack is egg-shaped, with the radius of turns three and four much tighter than that of turns one and two. When drivers are asked what is NASCAR’s toughest oval, Darlington is the near unanimous answer.
Texas is a close second.
“Track conditions are going to play a big part in whether you’re running the top or the bottom at Texas,” Ware said. “If you focus on just running one lane, you’re probably going to get a bad read for what you need throughout the race as rubber builds up. And then, over in (turns) one and two, depending on the speed of the race, you may or may not be shifting, so there’s a lot of variables that you really have to be aware of and implement in practice to get a good balance, a good read for all the different scenarios that can happen in the race.”
Sunday’s Würth 400 presented by LIQUI MOLY will be the 13th NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas since its repave and reprofiling. However, it will be just the third Cup Series start at the track for Ware.
“The simulator at the Ford Performance Center has been an invaluable resource,” Ware said. “It provides as realistic a setting as you can get without physically being on the track, at speed. There’s a decent amount of correlation between the sim and what you see and feel when you first get in the car for practice on Saturday. That repetition is valuable.”
The simulator also allows drivers to creep up and then go past the edge of control, without mangling their racecar and taking the obligatory trip to the infield care center.
“You do have a reset button in the simulator. Your car doesn’t get damaged if you scrape the wall or have a big mistake. There’s more room for error, and you can experiment with running different lines and taking risks,” Ware said.
“At the same time, you can’t really replicate the sensation of the G-forces and what it feels like when the car gets sideways. You can feel a lot of that stuff happening, or getting ready to happen, in real life. But in the simulator, you only know that you’re breaking free and losing traction by the time you see it on the screen. By then, you’re past the point of no return.”
Ware knows the real-life feeling of being past the point of no return at Texas. In his last start there in 2022 – the first year of the current-generation Cup car – Ware endured a massive impact with the turn four wall.
“We were having steering-rack issues and I hit the wall really hard. It was a 110G hit, and it broke my foot, tore all the ligaments. I was on crutches at the next race,” Ware said.
“It just proves things happen quickly at Texas. You don’t have much time to react.”
Ware and his Cup Series counterparts get their taste of Texas on Saturday when practice begins at 10 a.m. CDT. Ware will only get 25 minutes behind the wheel of his No. 51 Arby’s Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Rick Ware Racing before qualifying begins at 11:10 a.m. One single, high-speed lap will determine his starting spot in Sunday’s 38-car field. Prime will provide live coverage of practice and qualifying while FS1 will broadcast the Würth 400 live beginning at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday along with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
About Rick Ware Racing:
Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age 6 when the third-generation racer began his driving career and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver’s seat and into full-time team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with his wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that competes full-time in the elite NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, Progressive American Flat Track and FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX).
