The Best Way To Go Fast At Homestead Is To Go Slow

Homestead-Miami Speedway. Hands down the coolest track on the schedule. The southern Florida facility has been a staple on the Cup series schedule since 1999 and played host to Championship Weekend from 2002 through 2019. In addition to the three NASCAR national series, Homestead Miami Speedway hosted CART/Indycar from 1996 through 2010 and the Grand Am Sports Car Series on an infield road course in 1998 and again from 2000 until 2012.

How did we end up racing here? On March 27, 1991 the Miami Herald reported that Ralph Sanchez, promoter of the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami CART race, was looking to build a permanent racing facility in Miami-Dade County.

Homestead City Manager Alex Muxo was able to convince Sanchez to build his speedway in Homestead, FL by committing $11 million of city money to the project. The money was to come from reconstruction funding in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew as well as the expected increase in tax revenue from “The Villages of Homestead” real estate project that was currently under development. The city ended up covering more than half of the construction cost after providing another $20m in funding from citywide hotel taxes.

The original layout of Homestead Miami Speedway was a flat rectangular shape, essentially a scaled-down version of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. After the first two races at the facility, an Xfinity race in 1995 and a CART race in 1996, went off with little passing and a narrow racing groove a plan was created to widen the circuit’s corners.

Sanchez knew that there was no way he could attract the NASCAR Cup Series to his track in its current state. The circuit was reconfigured into an oval in 1997 for a cost of $8m million and an additional $17 million was spent on improving amenities for race fans. A complex reconfiguration of ownership was undertaken in 1998 with International Speedway Corporation and Penske Motorsports taking over 80% of Miami Motorsports, a promotion company that leased the facility from the City of Homestead. After the buyout, many terms of the lease agreement were rewritten prior to the Cup series racing in Miami in 1999.

It’s somewhat ironic to bring up given the current legal climate surrounding NASCAR, but Homestead Miami Speedway was estimated to have lost between $35 and $51 million in profits due to the lease agreement that it signed with NASCAR in order to obtain a Cup series date in just two years. The Miami Herald reported in 2001 “with one baffling stroke of the pen, Homestead agreed that it would take no share of its own speedway’s profits, even if the NASCAR races were wildly successful.” In the same article, author Carl Hiaasen (yes, that Carl Hiaasen) notes that the speedway was “built (and rebuilt) with some $60 million in public funds but the speedway has chiefly been a windfall for those who put on the races.”

The flat oval configuration still wasn’t wildly compelling and in 2002 it was decided that the circuit would be reconfigured again. The banking angle was increased from a steady 6º to a progressive style with 18º at the bottom and 20º at the top. Once the racing surface had aged in the South Florida sun for a couple of years we were left with one of, if not the, best oval racing facility in the world.

This is a track that has everything you could want for a stock car race. High tire falloff, multiple grooves, and most importantly the ability to rip the boards (aka run the wall). Late in every run at Homestead, the racing groove will move to be right up against the outer retaining wall and it is truly a sight to behold.

Up until the Covid-19 pandemic, NASCAR still allowed limited testing for rookies. In 2019, we used one of Noah Gragson’s rookie tests to go down to Homestead Miami Speedway. We went through 18 sets of tires and ran just over 400 miles during two days of testing. Below you can see some GoPro footage from a camera mounted on the right rear of the car. For a detailed explanation of the aerodynamic effects of “running the wall” you can check out my earlier piece on Kansas Speedway.

Oh yeah. Running the fence at Homestead. So much fun!! @JRMotorsports pic.twitter.com/eXJHrHJWfT

— Noah Gragson (@NoahGragson) August 19, 2019

The car never strays more than a few inches from the wall at any point around the circuit be it straightaway, corner entry, center, or exit. Doing it in a private test session is one thing, but watching drivers battle inches off the wall with a championship on the line was a spectacular sight to behold. Take a look at this clip from the 2019 Xfinity Series championship race. You can see from the onboard shots just how much both Cole Custer and Tyler Reddick are having to wrestle their machines around the circuit while the external shots show them managing to do this within inches of the retaining wall.

The high falloff nature of this circuit rewards drivers who are able to manage their tires more than any other track on the schedule. Aggressive tire saving goes against every common conception about NASCAR racing. Normally, you would expect to see drivers battling wheel to wheel trying to scoop up every position that they can on the start and restarts. At a high tire wear/falloff track this is quite literally the worst thing that a driver could do. It is very easy for drivers to get baited into battling with one another early in the run. It is in a racing driver’s nature to never concede a position, but at a track like Homestead that’s exactly what a driver needs to do. Noah Gragson was one of the best drivers to race in the Xfinity Series at this racetrack. Let’s break down the beginning of Stage 3 during the 2022 race that we won together.

On Lap 97, Gragson led the field to green. The next lap, he surrenders the lead to Austin Hill. One lap later he lets Trevor Bayne by for 2^nd place. Four laps later and it’s AJ Allmendinger that is passing Gragson to take 3^rd place. By Lap 106 Gragson has fallen back to just over two seconds behind race leader Trevor Bayne.

Image: NASCAR

After riding in 4^th place for 6 laps, Gragson comes over the radio to tell the team “alright, it’s go time” and begins reeling in the leaders. He closed the gap down from 2.3 seconds to 1.8 seconds in just 1 lap. Gragson catches Allmendinger for 4^th place on Lap 120 and on Lap 124 he is taking the lead back from Trevor Bayne. By Lap 132, just before the beginning of a green flag pit cycle, he has stretched his lead 4 seconds and Bayne has fallen to 5^th place over 6 seconds behind Gragson.

Image: NASCAR

His run to the front was a masterclass in tire management. By patiently waiting until later in the run, Gragson is able to pass his competitors like he’s playing a video game with the difficulty settings turned all the way down. It almost doesn’t look fair, but it is the result of diligently managing his tires in the beginning phases of the run.

The most important thing to understand about tire falloff is that it is non-linear. Speeds begin by slowing down rapidly but taper off to an asymptote later in the run. A tire would physically run out of rubber before this theoretical point is ever reached, but by plotting out the lap times and applying a trend line you can see the point I’m trying to make. Giving up a small bit of time per lap at the beginning of a run pays off massively on the back half of the run. Below is a graph of Noah Gragson and Trevor Bayne’s lap times during the run that we just discussed from 2022 with a polynomial trendline plotted for each driver.

You can see that Bayne ran hard to take the lead at the beginning of the run while Gragson was turning much slower laps. As we get towards the end of the run Gragson’s trend line has just about reached an asymptote around a 36.5 second lap time. By contrast, Bayne’s trendline is above a 37-second lap time and still sloping slightly upwards. The life that Bayne took out of his tires between Laps 97 and 106 as he tried to run away with the lead was too much to be recovered from. No amount of slowing down later can help a tire recover from that. Whenever you see a driver making big moves in the opening laps of a run, check back in on them later in the run, and more likely than not you will see them paying a price for that early aggression. Unlike saving fuel, where a driver can run hard in the opening laps and then back down the pace later in a run to compensate for it. When it comes to saving tires, that has to start right from the drop of the green flag. The life that a driver takes out of their tires in the opening laps is magnified significantly later in the run.

Tire management creates a lot of turbulence in the field as drivers surge forward and fall back over the course of a run. Bayne restarted in 4^th, drove to the lead, and then fell back to 5^th. Gragson started with the lead, fell to 4^th, and then drove back to the lead. The comers and goers over the course of the run is what creates compelling racing, and the beauty of a high falloff track is that it’s all organic. The turbulence in the pack is created solely by drivers differing abilities to manage their equipment without any sort of gimmicky push-to-pass or DRS-type nonsense.

For more information on the physics of tire degradation and techniques used by drivers to minimize tire wear, you can check out my earlier piece about Richmond Raceway.

The high levels of tire falloff will also play an important role in how teams will lay out their strategy for the race. Xfinity Series teams are allocated 5 sets of tires to complete the 200-lap race. If all goes according to plan, teams will pit once at the end of the first two stages, once for fuel in the third stage and then they will save one set of tires in case of a late race yellow. For whatever reason, this race tends to see a late race yellow so saving a set of tires is a prudent strategy. Over the past 5 races, the final caution flag has come out on average with 10 laps remaining.

Strategy anxiety for teams comes when a caution flag is displayed. Late in a stage, teams that are struggling may take the opportunity to put on fresh tires and race to the front to steal themselves some stage points. If you are the leader at the time of caution you wouldn’t want to get off strategy and burn a set of tires, but losing out on your stage points is mildly infuriating.

Even worse, after the final fuel stop teams will only have one set of tires remaining. The window for this fuel stop in Stage 3 is from about 65 to 40 laps to go in the race. If a caution comes out with 30 laps remaining you will likely see a split decision. The first choice would be to take your final set of tires now and hope that there are no more cautions later in the race. On the flip side, you could choose to stay out and pray for a caution later in the race. There’s no real okay-ish result from either of those choices if the caution flags don’t fall in your favor. The disparity between new and used tires makes it a pure hero-or-zero type scenario.

All photos: Daylon Barr/Big Machine Racing unless otherwise noted