With the threat of rain looming, here are a few things to watch for the 2026 New Hampshire NASCAR race.
We’re in the granite state, where the ground repeatedly freezes and thaws. Water seeps into cracks and crannies, then freezes. Since water is the rare liquid that gets bigger when it freezes, the ice pushes the crack and makes it larger.
Add to that the almost non-existent banking and you have a very technical track that rewards a driver’s ability to adapt and conserve tires during the race.
The Track
New Hampshire Motor Speedway is a 1.058-mile track with variable banking of two to seven degrees in the corners. The straights have just one degree of banking, which is mostly only to facilitate drainage.
It’s a true oval, with the frontstretch the same length as the backstretch — 1,500 feet apiece. That leaves 2,586 feet for the turns, or 1,293 feet per set of turns. According to track guru Van Walling, the track is 57% straights, 14% transitions and 32% turning.
The picture below, from Google Earth, makes these differences apparent on a macro scale. You can see that the asphalt in the corners is a decidedly different color than the asphalt on the straights.
The Track Surface
I feel bad now that I previously described Pocono as a Frankenstein of a track, because New Hampshire deserves the name much more. It is the definition of inhomogeneous with different types of asphalt, different size and types of cracks, and different degrees of wear.
The cracks are large, irregular and everywhere, as the photo of cracks in Turn 4 shows. Those cracks are a good three or four inches wide in places. A few were deep enough that I could stick my hand in all the way up to the second set of knuckles.
Every crack is different. Some seems to have last had any attention some time ago: the sealer that’s there is deep inside the crack. Others look to have been repaired more recently.
A very large patch in Turn 3 runs the width of the track. The patch is more than a foot wide – and has its own cracks starting.
This patch is just one of the bumps that define Turn 3. Chase Briscoe told me that running over these cracks is like running over expansion joints. In-car views (like the one posted by Steve Letarte and driven by Jeff Burton) seem to be a little bumpier than I would have expected from that description.
Searching for Grip
The picture below, going into Turn 3, sort of sums up the state of the track. You’ve got two different types of asphalt (light and dark) and the very top lane is a gradual transition from one to the other. The light asphalt on the straights has really good grip, while the darker sections have less grip.
And don’t forget about the remnants of the PJ1 hanging around from a previous application.
So, as Todd Gilliland said:
“So so many different things for the team to focus on. You could make the car do probably three different things just based on the line you run.”
Shane van Gisbergen has a similar impression of the track.
“The feel of all three lanes are totally different,” he said. “So it has honestly been one that’s just confused me, I feel, like my whole career. I feel like this is a track where I just am extremely lost every time I come here.”
SvG smiled as he said that, and went on to say that he viewed the unique track as a challenge to be conquered.
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