When you think of NASCAR, you’re probably thinking of an oval racing-only series dominated by stock car drivers who have mastered the art of the left turn. However, more and more road (or street) courses are popping up on the NASCAR calendar, and those tracks bring out something called “road course ringers.”

What are road course ringers? Where does the name come from? And can we actually say that road course ringers still exist? We’re delving into everything you need to know about these right-turn specialists before the NASCAR Cup Series heads off to race on the streets of Chicago.

What are road course ringers?

In essence, a “road course ringer” is the term for a driver who almost solely competes on road courses in NASCAR. This driver usually doesn’t compete in a NASCAR series full time, which means that their skillset is focused on a different series — one that includes road and street circuits as part of its schedule.

NASCAR itself describes road course ringers as “drivers who specialize in turning both left and right,” as opposed to NASCAR-only drivers who primarily specialize in turning left.

While a team will hire a road course ringer to help maximize its performance on NASCAR’s non-oval races, they can implement this road course ringer in a few different ways. Some teams may actually swap out their normal driver and replace him with a road course ringer; that’s a pretty extreme move, but it’s common among lower-tier teams that really need a good result.

More common nowadays is the addition of an extra car for road course events. Some teams, like Trackhouse, field an additional car on road courses with the specific intention of bringing in some of the biggest names in the international racing scene.

These drivers have been part of NASCAR since the Cup Series’ first-ever road race, which took place on a temporary road course at Linden Airport in New Jersey back in 1954.

As the NASCAR schedule evolved to include more and more road courses, road course ringers began to turn up more often, with a handful of drivers comprising the bulk of the road course ringer field: Boris Said, Ron Fellows, Justin Marks, and Andy Lally.

Road course ringers can also be known as road course specialists, road course experts, or road runners.

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Formula 1 drivers turned NASCAR road course ringers

While many of NASCAR’s road course specialists came from IndyCar or the Trans Am series, several drivers with Formula 1 experience have also earned the title.

Let’s start with our American talent: Dan Gurney and Mark Donohue.

Dan Gurney‘s greatest successes came in IndyCar and sports car racing, but the racer also competed in Formula 1, both as a driver and a constructor; he’s the first of three racers who have won events in sports cars, Formula 1, NASCAR, and Indy (with the other two being Mario Andretti and Juan Pablo Montoya).

Gurney competed in a handful of NASCAR events over the years, taking five Grand National victories in his nine road-course starts in the series.

While Mark Donohue only had 14 F1 starts, he did manage to net a podium. His greatest successes came in America — among them a victory at the 1973 Winston Western 500 at Riverside International Raceway.

But there are also three well-known F1 drivers who have earned the road course ringer title.

After Nelson Piquet Jr.’s Formula 1 career ended thanks to the 2008 Crashgate scandal, the Brazilian headed off to NASCAR. While he competed on both ovals and road courses, his only win came at the 2012 Sargento 200 Xfinity series race, at Road America. His best performances were often on road courses.

Kimi Raikkonen, 2007 F1 Champion, tried his hand at a two lower-tier NASCAR events, both on ovals. However, his greatest legacy in the Cup Series came when he signed as Trackhouse Racing’s inaugural Project 91 driver for the 2022 Cup Series race at Watkins Glen.

(Project 91 is the name for the team’s part-time entry; the car is reserved for international drivers looking to make their mark in NASCAR. Raikkonen was the first racer to take on the challenge; the second was Shane van Gisbergen, who used that seat to win last year’s Chicago street race.)

Finally, there’s Jacques Villeneuve. The 1997 Formula 1 Champion has 10 NASCAR road course starts under his belt, with his best performances coming in the NASCAR Nationwide Series between 2009 and 2012.

Do road course ringers still exist?

If you bring up the “road course ringer” name today, some longtime NASCAR fans will scoff. Many feel that the term should be reserved for the very small set of drivers who only competed in NASCAR’s road course races, and/or who appeared at almost every road course for years at a time.

Those folks will argue that the term “road course ringer” has become too broad — and admittedly, some people have begun to use it to refer to a broader variety of racers. Some full-time NASCAR drivers who have secured several impressive road course finishes can sometimes be called ringers these days. The term has also been used to describe drivers who have been signed for a single road course race, but who have never returned.

Perhaps the use of the term has changed — but so has NASCAR.

The stock car series’ roots lie, of course, in oval tracks, but in recent years, NASCAR has worked hard to expand the series’ horizons. Road courses comprise a larger segment of the calendar than ever before, and the series broke new boundaries in 2023 with the introduction of the Chicago street course — the first track of its kind in the Cup Series.

Plus, the latest version of Cup Series technology, called the Next-Gen car, was designed with road courses in mind. Previous NASCAR machines were asymmetrical to better capitalize on the forces exerted in oval racing — which made the cars look silly on road courses. The Next-Gen machinery is designed with road courses in mind, though they’re still effective on ovals.

Further, the cars were designed with global GT3 cars in mind as well; the whole goal there was to make it simpler for one-off drivers to hop behind the wheel.

So while the meaning of the term ‘road course ringer’ has evolved over the years, so too has NASCAR — and that may be for the best.

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