“Nobody hit anybody”: NASCAR legend Richard Petty delivers his verdict after a respectful road course racing at COTA 

Richard Petty shared his thoughts on the recently concluded road course race at the Circuit of The Americas. Petty, speaking about the third race of the current Cup Series season, the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix, pointed out how respectful the drivers were towards each other.

NASCAR hosted the first road course of the season at COTA last Sunday, March 2. Christopher Bell won ahead of 2025 Daytona 500 winner William Byron (of Hendrick Motorsports) and 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick.

This was Bell's second win of the season, and it came in two back-to-back race weekends. The race at Austin saw numerous knocks and hits, but as per Richard 'the King' Petty, the drivers were respectful towards one another while racing around the road course.

Following the conclusion of the race, Petty shared his expertise on his official YouTube channel, where he discussed the positive and negative takes of the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix. In one of the snippets of the video that was uploaded from his official X account, he talked about the new layout of the Circuit of The Americas.

"When they cut the long loop out on the backstretch there, it really made it a lot better of a race for Cup racing," he said.

Following this, he opened up on how the drivers were respectful towards each other. He added:

"The 24, the 45, the 8, and the 20, each one of them had a chance to maybe knock the other one out, but nobody hit anybody; everybody really respected each other."

NASCAR added the Circuit of The Americas race to their calendar back in 2021. This was the first time the stock car racing series added a road course to their calendar in the modern era. This was the fifth edition of the NASCAR Cup Series race at COTA.

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When Richard Petty shared a straightforward solution for Superspeedway problems

Following the conclusion of the 2025 Daytona 500, Richard Petty touched upon the problems of Superspeedway racing these days. Speaking about this on his official YouTube channel, 'the King' stated that NASCAR should increase the horsepower of the cars and make them dependent on the drivers.

"The way to make them more exciting is to give them more horsepower and let them run faster. The faster they run, the more the driver has to stay on his toes," Petty said.

"And when you get cars running 200 miles an hour instead of 185 miles an hour, all the drivers are not capable of running that speed that close to each other. So that's the first thing to really separate the cars because that's the way how it used to be," he further added.

NASCAR Cup Series drivers racing at the 2025 Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway - Source: Getty

Notably, the Superspeedway racing of late received numerous criticisms after the drivers flocked with each other during the race, providing very few opportunities for overtakes, and made the race less appealing to some people.