Multiple lanes, progressive banking, and high tire wear make Homestead one of the most beloved tracks on the schedule by both fans and drivers. Last year's race saw a spectacular three-way fight for the win with Tyler Reddick going from third to first to win on the final lap. That same race featured a record 33 lead changes between 11 different drivers.
There's constant action and no shortage of line choices around the 1.5-mile speedway, which hosted the NASCAR Cup Series title decider every year between 2003 and 2019. It was chosen for a reason, and even now, there is plenty of support for reinstating it as the finale. Others claim the track is also something sorely needed in modern NASCAR, with the current generation of car and tightness of the field making passing harder than it's ever been before.
So what do the drivers think?
Plenty of options
Alex Bowman, who starts Sunday's race from pole position, noted how the track "just gives you options" that many other tracks don't. He also earned pole position due to a sudden cloud moving over the track, showing just how weather-sensitive the 20+ year old surface can be.
“Yeah, when your race car is good, it’s really, really fun," he continued. "It is still really hard to pass, for sure, just like anywhere else we go. But there's so many different lines you can run, and running the wall can be so technical and a lot of fun.
"It's so high risk that there's not many other things that we do that are that high risk. Aside from maybe making speed at the Chicago street course or some of those places. And maybe not so much with this car as it was with the steel body car, but it still makes it a lot of fun. So yeah, I enjoy it. This hasn't been one of my better racetracks, so a place that I'm working on a lot, and I'm glad to at least be on the good side of things on Saturday, so far.”
Off-throttle time and tire wear
Denny Hamlin leads all active drivers with three wins at Homestead, so he has a reason to love this place even more than others. He was also one of the drivers on the losing end of last year's epic battle.
“I think there’s a combination between the tire wear you have at this track versus the way the track sets up itself," explained Hamlin when asked about what makes it so good for drivers. "Really can make a lot of different moves – you can cut distance or you can try to keep momentum, and that’s something that has to be fluid throughout the run. As a driver, you have a lot of tools at your disposal when you come to this track to change your line to help the race car do things it’s not doing well at the time. Certainly, it's a lot of off throttle time and that usually, when you have to use both pedals, the driver is tested more.”
Right up against the wall
Josh Berry joins Bowman on the front row for Sunday's race and is NASCAR's most recent winner after an impressive victory at Las Vegas in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.
One of the defining traits of Homestead is that the fastest way around the track is normally right up against the outside wall, something perfected by drivers like Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell.
"I think you see the guys that can run the wall a little bit better than others, that are a little bit more committed to it, and then some of us see it, like I said a minute ago, that you need to be a little bit more versatile and be able to run different lanes," said Berry. "So everybody kind of has their own strategy, but I feel like whenever we see tire wear and things like we see here, really the cars that drive good and stay underneath of you for a long run really show out just as much as the driver’s talent.”
A true 'drivers' track
Several drivers have called Homestead their favorite race track and Austin Dillon is among them, who said he "looks forward to returning to Homestead-Miami Speedway. It’s my favorite track that we race at. Homestead-Miami Speedway is a driver’s racetrack. It’s so much fun to run right up against the fence. You have to be disciplined in how you drive and save your tires. It’s a track that’s been good for me in my career winning a NASCAR Truck Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship. The Miami atmosphere is just one of the things I love about this time of year. There is nice weather, and fans always show up to support NASCAR racing."
It's a sentiment shared by his Richard Childress Racing teammate Kyle Busch, who won at Homestead in both 2015 and 2019 en route to claiming the Cup Series title.
“Homestead-Miami Speedway is always a fun racetrack," said the veteran driver. "It lends itself to drivers well because it can be a three, even four lane track as we venture from the bottom all the way to the wall. I've always looked forward to going to Homestead. It's a unique mile-and-a-half. We've run well there. I've won there. It's been a great track for me. I've won two championships by winning races there.”
Both races this year saw the final pass for the win come in the final two laps with Larson running down Layne Riggs late in the Truck race while Justin Allgaier prevailed in an overtime restart in Saturday's Xfinity race [although Larson had a massive 16-second lead before a late caution].
Based on last year's finish at Homestead, that trend is likely to continue on Sunday.
