Actually, I'm pretty pumped about V8 Supercars coming to the US. Touring cars, in general, are a great formula, and V8 Supercar is especially exciting. Hopefully, they can expand to other US tracks. Also, props to CotA. That's proving to be a very nice track.
(And, since this thread is apt to attract racing fans, let's not forget Indy 500 quals are this weekend, too.)

From what I can find, this series of races is getting no live coverage in the US. SpeedTV today is devoted to incidental coverage of the Nascar All-Star race, and neither of the two radio racing networks have anything on their schedules. ESPN may have something but I have never been able to navigate their broadcast schedules.

The problem here may be with the track itself. Circuit of the Americas has been a contentious project from the beginning as road courses in the US have a major problem drawing spectators. A huge portion of tracks' budgets go toward marketing. At some tracks, two-thirds of the admission price goes directly into selling that ticket in the first place.

Fans here want to see the entire track. Boxing in the finish line with grandstands is a serious blunder. Formula 1 may run well at COTA for a few years since those races are more about being seen than actually watching a race. Why COTA didn't build a fully viewable track is a real head-scratcher. They had a piece of ground with a natural depression and surrounding raised land that would have accommodated great sightlines of the entire track.

Also, COTA was not built for Nascar vehicles. Its turns are too tight, and that may be the reason why V8 Supercars are racing the shorter 2.4 mile circuit rather than the full 3.4 miles. The track was built specifically for Formula 1 and motorcycles. To be honest, I doubt V8 Supercars will return after 2014. The racers' reactions to this weekend's races will be pivotal in that decision. If they don't like the track, they won't be back.

So far, that is not looking so good. The heat is eating up tires and racers practiced on rain tires as they only get seven sets of slicks for the entire weekend including qualifying. The surfacing at COTA has also been a major griping point from the beginning. Apparently it is very abrasive despite the banking. Keeping the tire beads from melting this weekend is going to be the crew chiefs' biggest concern, and generally racers tolerate the problems of tire wear well enough but worrying about beads drives them nuts.

As much as I would love to see racing in the US that is more sophisticated than Nascar, I don't see it happening anytime during this decade. But, who knows? It is always possible that V8 Supercar drivers will have fun surmounting COTA's peculiarites and demand that the series fix a schedule far into the future. The best part about racing is its total lack of predictability.

Side note: Tire beads should not even be a topic of discussion concerning road courses.

Well, the track is certainly spectacular, but I don't actually lke the F1-style tracks as much as the local tracks they usually run on. The width and the lack of walls and sand traps close to the circuit itself should, in theory, encourage the usual hip-and-shoulder style of racing that typifies VS Supercars, but all it really does is give the faster cars more chances to get away from the pack, both in qualifying and in racing. At most circuits, the whole 28-car field is separated by around a second in qualifying, but at this event the spread was much greater.

The idea of a track that can be viewed from one point is something that's pretty foreign in Australia - there are no tracks where you can see the whole thing and only one (Barbagello Raceway in Perth) where you can see a substantial part from one place. I guess US motorsport fans are so used to oval tracks that it's hard to accept that you aren't going to be able to see the whole thing in a road circuit. I think the reason they are using the short circuit is more to do with the event format (4 x 100km sprints) - if they used the long track, spectators would see far less of the cars. The tight turns aren't a problem for these cars and some of the local tracks have even tighter corners. It would have been interesting to see one of the longer distance events run there, with the added spectacle of actual pit stops instead of the 'pretend' pit stops that are imposed by officials rather than needed. To watch these crews change four tyres and add up to 75 litres of fuel is four seconds is pretty amazing. Oval-track racing is generally viewed in a pretty negative light here by motorsport fans and watching pit crews run around with trolley jacks and huge churns of fuel over their shoulder makes NASCAR look pretty primitive (not to mention dangerous) compared to V8 Supercars.

The tyre issue is an important one. All V8 Supercar events have limited tyres allocated to each car but, at domestic events, they are able to bring with them tyres from previous events for use in practice sessions. There are actually two different control tyres - a hard and a soft compound and each event specifies which are to be used. Some events are all soft, some require that both hard and soft be used and some, like Austin, are all hard tyre events. There's no real issue with tyre degradation on the hard tyre, but getting through four practice sessions, four qualifying sessions and four races on seven sets of tyres is a big ask. The heat is not a huge issue, as quite a few of the domestic events are run in similar conditions. Tyre beads are never an issue with these cars - they use very low profile tyres on 18" rims, so there's very little sidewall flex.

I'd actually be surprised to see the series return to CoTA as well, but perhaps for different reasons. It's incredibly expensive to transport the entire field and the restrictions on the number of spares each team can bring, combined with the short turn-around time between meetings makes it a real challenge for teams. Events in New Zealand are popular, but that's a whole different scenario, being much closer and quite a few drivers being Kiwis means they get a chance to race on their own turf. Asia is not so bad because it's so much closer than the US. I don't think any resistance would come from drivers, because the track is a real driver's course and returning would not be as daunting because the track would be familiar. I think the resistance would come from team owners simply due to cost and the amount of preparation time lost due to the distance they have to travel. This event is particularly ill-timed in that the previous event was in Perth, around 5,000km from where the teams are based and where they had to depart for the US.

From what I read, the only issue that the drivers had on Saturday was with tires, but only that they should have used the soft sets. That right there puts to bed worries about heat and excessive wear. The driver interviews all sounded fairly upbeat. Many of them expect the 2014 races to be much better. Also, much of the banter on social media from spectators was glowingly positive.

Are mandatory pit stops common for these races? That seems a bit odd for a race segment of only 100 km.

One gripe I have about racing coverage in the US is that none of it is objective, especially concerning international series. Nascar wields a lot of influence over the networks and their content in exchange for virtually unrestricted access to drivers, crews and racing executives. Nascar killed Cart in the US and is slowly diminishing F1, and they are doing it with nothing more than schemes like mandatory press interviews and scheduled autograph sessions.

Yeah, the tyre degradation was much lower than was expected, based on the limited data available from other categories that have run there. The grip level is quite low, which would be why they would prefer the soft tyre. No, mandatory pit stops are not usual for sprint races and 100 km is probably right on the limit for the small sprint tank - I think the reason might have been to showcase the category more and pit stops are a big part of the spectacle. I think it would have been better to run a mixed event, with sprint races on the Saturday and a 250km race on the Sunday, which would introduce full pit stops with refuelling as well. It's possible they stuck with the sprint format so they didn't have to freight the fuel rigs, though. The new 'super-sprint' format would have opened the eyes of US motorsport fans to a whole new world, I think. This is a new race format for this season, with a 120km race split into two sections by a 15 minute break and a 50km/h double-lane rolling re-start for the second section (cars re-start in the order they were in at the end of the first section). It's brought some fierce action right through the field, because there's no point in playing strategy games and drivers have to be prepared to take a lot of risks if they don't want to get swamped.

V8 Supercar teams are also subject to mandatory press sessions, autograph sessions etc (drivers are fined for missing any of these) and teams have to allow unrestricted access to pit garages etc for the TV broadcaster. I thinks this is a good thing because it lets fans see what is going on behind the scenes and makes the sport much more accessible. It must be incredibly frustrating for the teams at times, but they all understand that, without TV coverage, the sport doesn't exist.

Something to remember is that, not only were teams faced with a new track, but they are also coming to grips with brand-new cars, so they have very little data on how the cars are going to work. Austin is only the 5th round of the series and the restricted testing opportunities that the series mandates means there is not a lot of data to guide set-up at the start of an event. A return to CoTA would see the teams starting performance set where they left off this weekend and the lap times would tumble from there. There would also be a lot more confidence from the drivers in pushing harder. It's been a difficult track for drivers to test their limits on in some areas because of lack of visibility, particularly that flat section of esses with the red, white and blue kerb marking - the drivers can't see the road surface for about 130 metres in front of them, making it hard to gauge the apex.