'What's the Toughest Track In NASCAR?' Daytona 500 Drivers Give Their Surprising Answers

By Bill Speros

Feb 12th, 2026 5:17 PM EST

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DAYTONA BEACH, Florida - Ahead of the Daytona 500, Bookies.com asked 14 NASCAR Cup Series Drivers: “What's the Toughest Track In NASCAR?” The runaway answer might surprise you.

While the 2.5-mile superspeedway here remains the Crown Jewel in NASCAR’s Cup Series, none of the drivers we spoke with mentioned Daytona International Speedway.

In a sense, that’s not a surprise. The track remains pristine. Pit road rests seamlessly parallel to start-finish line. It enjoys full-time care, constant use, and easy-on-pavement weather in Florida. Sinkholes remain more of an issue in Volusia County than potholes.

The other grand superspeedway, the 2.66-mile oval at Talladega, provides drivers with a course that once saw Bill Elliott turn a qualifying lap for the 1987 Winston 500 averaging 212.809 mph. That was the pre-restrictor plate days.

While those superspeedways give drivers consistency on each turn, they also offer almost certain odds each week for that fans and drivers know simply as “The Big One.”

“You start to realize that the wreck is going to happen. You may make it through, you may not. The further back you are, the more likely you are to get into that crash. So that’s why everything beforehand you position yourself to have options,” driver Joey Logano said Wednesday during NASCAR Media Day.

Kyle Busch won the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series season opener. William Byron enters the Daytona 500 as the two-time defending champion. At BetMGM Sportsbook, Team Penske teammates Logano and Ryan Blaney are the co-favorites at +1200 odds as of Feb. 12.

What's the Toughest Track In NASCAR?

That question has a different answer, depending on the driver.

They all have their own challenges in their own ways," Logano said in response to the question from Bookies.com. “You’ve got super speedways that are challenging in their own way. Road courses and short tracks, mile-and-a-halves, and everything in between. They’re all challenging in their own way because you’re competing against the best. You can take something that is simple, but we make it complex because you’re going against the best trying to find the smallest advantage possible. It’s like that in every sport. Putting a ball in a hoop doesn’t sound that hard. When you’re doing it against LeBron James it’s pretty frigging hard."

For many NASCAR Series drivers, Darlington Raceway remains "Too Tough to Tame.” For others, their biggest speedbump rests at the foot the White Mountains in Loudon, New Hampshire.  Some have issues with concrete tracks, while others struggle on road courses.

New Hampshire Motor Speedway plays host to the lone NASCAR Cup Series stop in New England. Drivers wrestle with the 1.058-mile oval on the second-to-last week of the regular season this year on Aug. 23.

Darlington torments NASCAR Cup Series twice per year with its 1.366-mile egg-shaped oval. The "Lady In Black" contains different turn angles on each side of the track, narrow lanes, and constant strategy shifts.

Here's our driver-by-driver breakdown on their specific answers to: What's the Toughest Track In NASCAR.

Denny Hamlin | Darlington Raceway

"Darlington's the most challenging track simply because of how narrow it is, how small of a lane you have to hit to go fast at that track. Physically demanding. To me, far and away the toughest."

Ross Chastain | Darlington Raceway

"I've had speed there. But it's the toughest to get around. I haven't put together the full race. I love it, but it's tough to make a lap. It's shaped like an egg. You enter the corners at two drastically different speeds, which makes for different downforce numbers. Different grip levels with the banking."

Chase Elliott | What Makes Them Difficult

"Buddy, if I knew, I'd have fixed it."

Joey Logano | All Tracks

"You can take something that is simple, but we make it complex because you're going against the best trying to find the smallest advantage possible. It's like that in every sport. Putting a ball in a hoop doesn't sound that hard. When you're doing it against LeBron James it's pretty frigging hard."

Jimmie Johnson | New Hampshire Motor Speedway

"The radius of the turns, 3 and 4. And the difference between the 2 ends. It doesn't look it, but the radius of turns 1 and 2 is a lot tighter and flatter. In 3 and 4, there's a little straightaway section. The properties of the car and the adjustments that you make, there's not a global adjustment to make that helps you. They’re just two totally different ends."

Alex Bowman | New Hampshire Motor Speedway

"It's just an awkward racetrack. The car never feels good there. There are so many ways to manipulate that racetrack, it can confuse you. You feel a little bit lost."

Bubba Wallace | New Hampshire Motor Speedway

"We're not pumped for Loudon. Our results there haven't been that great. That's the one that's circled."

Brad Keselowski | Circuit of the Americas

"For me, COTA is one of the toughest tracks."

Todd Gilliland | Dover & Bristol

"I’ve never been good on the concrete tracks. Dover’s one I’ve always run horribly at. Still trying to figure it out. And Bristol, I’ve never had great feel for it. Mostly around the bottom of the racetrack for whatever reason."

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