Why is IRL and NASCAR driven on ovals?

Question

Why is IRL and NASCAR driven on ovals?

Answer 1

Who knows, but there needs to be more road courses in the IRL!  NASCAR can stay on ovals, but the IRL defiantly needs more road and street courses.

Answer 2

...to fit the track into a smaller parcel of land?  (Leaving more room for the festive halo that surrounds the track i.e. lemonade stands, souvenir shops, display kiosks etc.)

Or maybe it's to enable cars to traverse a 500 mile race in one spot, thus rendering the entire capitalistic venture feasible.

I much prefer the temporary street courses like St. Petersburg.  Edmonton is starting to look sweet, too.

Answer 3

Nope, its so they can cram as many spectators round as possible. More money.

Answer 4

Maybe because it's different. The cars are probably built to go in a circle, and would test something different than a track. More speed, less handling.

Answer 5

lack of imagination

Answer 6

What a lousy bunch of answers so far!!

"less handling"?..........."simple"?........

IRL cars go faster than any other series and unlike the F1 cars and NASCAR they don't even have power steering ...they have 2 different chassis and three different wing setups they run. they run almost half of their races on road and street courses also...

Oval racing is boring to some but just because you don't like it you should at least LEARN about the sport before you go talking smack about it.  

Who else drives open wheeled cars at over 230mph????

It's about pure SPEED.... IRL cars go REAL FAST and they operate at a very technichal standard. there is NOTHING "simple" about turining left at 200mph...period....

love it or leave it......it's NOT going away....

also...just after Indy, Scott Dixon had an evaluation at the Michael Johnson trainng center in Texas...they proclaimed that after the "evaluation" Scott Dixon was a "world class athelete"....Olympic track athletes train there.....driving at the IRL level is much more complicated than most people realize...

It's a real hard job...

Answer 7

good racing (some times)

Answer 8

because like most americans its simple

Answer 9

From it's beginnings, Formula One has only been driving on modified street courses (ex. Monaco) and soon after, began to drive on purpose built tracks after WWII. (ex. Monza and Silverstone)  Technically, the only oval track they ever raced on was Indianapolis, when the Indy 500 was part of the FIA World Championship between 1950-1960.  Hardly anyone raced there with their F1 cars, so that's why they dropped Indy in 1960.

On the other hand, the IRL and Nascar have their roots in oval courses....IRL with Indianapolis, and Nascar with Daytona beach.  But from about 1960 onwards, the IRL (then USAC...then CART) branched out to include modified street courses such as Long Beach and purpose built circuits such as Laguna Seca.  Nascar has stuck with primarily oval courses with a few road courses (Sears Point and Watkins Glen)