Texas Motor Speedway 2025 NASCAR Track Profile

[Editor’s note: The following article is from Athlon Sports’ 2025 Racing Annual magazine. Order your copy online today, or buy one at retail racks and newsstands nationwide.]

Texas Motor Speedway’s lone date moves from April to May this year. The 1.5-mile oval is another 1990s-built cookie-cutter track, holding two dates on the schedule from 2005-2020. It distinguishes itself from its brethren in that Texas’ corners differ, with drivers struggling with the narrowness of Turns 1 and 2. Hard crashes and tire wear are also up in the Next Gen era, with Alex Bowman suffering a concussion here in fall race of 2022.

Texas has proven to be a wild card in recent years, with eight different winners in the past eight races. Last season, Chase Elliott ended his winless streak of over a year with a trip to Texas’ victory lane. It was his first win and first top 5 at the track since his rookie campaign in 2016.

Kyle Busch (4) and Denny Hamlin (3) are the only active drivers with multiple wins here. Busch also leads the series in top 5s (14), top 10s (19), and laps led (1,069), but the bulk of those came in Joe Gibbs Racing equipment.

In the three Next Gen Texas races, only race winners Tyler Reddick and William Byron have multiple top 5s (two apiece). The three drivers with the highest average finish are the only three with a top 10 in every Next Gen race – Byron (3.8), Brad Keselowski (5.8), and Chase Briscoe (7.0). Briscoe has yet to lead a lap in Fort Worth, but his move to JGR should change that.

Kyle Larson has led the most laps in the last three Texas races (195) with his best finish being a ninth-place run in 2022. Reddick (143) and Bubba Wallace (116) are the only others to lead 100-plus laps in a Next Gen car.

Texas Motor Speedway track info

Site: Fort Worth, Texas

Laps: 1.5-mile quad-oval

Banking/Turns 1, 2: 20 degrees

Banking/Turns 3, 4: 24 degrees

Banking/Straightaways: 5 degrees

2025 Date: May 4

Distance: 267 laps, 400.5 miles

2024 winner

Chase Elliott

Scouting report

It took almost a decade, but the reconfigured Texas Motor Speedway seemed to turn a corner in 2024. The 2018 layout, combined with no shortage of traction compounds that ruined the surface, produced generally awful racing for eight years across two generations of Cup cars. The 2024 race saw the track widen out, produce multiple lanes, and actual compelling competition. It just took the surface a long time to push out the traction compound that was erroneously applied to it for its first couple of races. The 2025 race could go a long way to declaring that Texas is back to form.