Charlotte Motor Speedway opened in 1960 and became one of the most important venues in American stock car racing. An infield road course was first announced in 1970 and opened for racing in 1971 as part of the 1971 World 600 race weekend, measuring between 1.750 and 1.900 miles in early reports. By August 1974, the road course had been reconfigured to 2.250 miles (3.621 km). For decades the road course hosted sports car and other non-NASCAR events at the facility.
The defining step toward a dedicated NASCAR road-oval hybrid came in 2018, when the road course was modified to accommodate stock car racing. The key change was the addition of a chicane on the backstretch, designed to break the high-speed momentum cars would carry from the banked oval sections into the infield. The configuration was further refined in 2019 when the backstretch chicane was adjusted. Additional chicane modifications were announced in 2024.
The Roval uses portions of Charlotte Motor Speedway's 1.5-mile quad-oval, incorporating its banked turns at each end, connected by the infield road course. The frontstretch of the main oval is used as the start-finish straight. Banking in the oval turns reaches 24 degrees, and the transition from flat infield tarmac onto the banking is one of the defining technical elements of the circuit. The backstretch chicane, added in 2018, is the primary overtaking location and also functions as a safety measure to slow cars before the sharp infield corners.
The Bank of America 400, originally known as the National 500 and dating back to 1960 as one of Charlotte's two annual NASCAR events, was shifted to the Roval configuration in 2018, placing a playoff-round stock car race on a road-oval hybrid for the first time in the modern NASCAR era. The Roval's inclusion in the NASCAR playoffs made it a decisive venue: drivers who performed poorly at the circuit faced elimination from title contention.
The race attracted considerable attention as stock cars, optimised primarily for oval racing, were required to navigate tight infield road course sections at moderate speeds and then accelerate through the steeply banked oval. Tyre strategy and road-course handling setup became significant variables.
In 2026 the event was shifted back to the traditional oval format, ending the Roval's seven-year run as a NASCAR Cup Series playoff venue.
Charlotte Motor Speedway is owned by Speedway Motorsports, LLC and is located on a complex that covers approximately 2,000 acres (810 ha) in Concord. The complex includes a clay short track, a dirt track, and ZMax Dragway as well as the main oval and infield facilities. The track hosted its first NASCAR race in 1960 and has a capacity of 95,000 as of 2021. The Roval infrastructure exists within the main oval's infield, using purpose-built road course sections constructed progressively since the early 1970s. A dedicated standalone road course named Ten Tenths Motor Club was opened in October 2024 as an additional road-racing venue within the Charlotte Motor Speedway complex.
The Charlotte Roval was one of several hybrid oval-road configurations developed at major American oval facilities to bring road-course variety to NASCAR's schedule. Its status as a playoff race amplified its significance, forcing teams and drivers unaccustomed to road racing to develop that capability as a competitive necessity. The concept of the roval — leveraging existing infrastructure to create a new circuit character without building a separate facility — influenced how American motorsport venues thought about diversifying their event calendars.