The Drive In: Hill Country Two-Lanes to the Gates of COTA on US Grand Prix Weekend

There is a version of race weekend that begins in a grandstand. This is not that version.

This one begins with a cold engine and a quiet town square, somewhere west of Austin, while the circuit is still a rumor on the horizon. It is about the hours before the noise: the limestone and live oak, the ranch roads that ask you to pay attention, the city that has spent all week dressing itself in team colors, and the long straight run east to a red tower rising out of the prairie.

What follows is a composite. It is not one owner's diary or one timed run. It is a drive stitched together from real roads, the published race-week schedule and the circuit's own directions, so you can picture it, plan it or simply ride along.

Before the noise

Picture this: Friday, October 23, 2026. Gates at Circuit of The Americas open at 9:00 AM today, and parking opens half an hour before that. The first Formula 1 practice session runs from 12:30 to 1:30 PM local time. The second follows at 4:00 PM, and the F1 Academy opening race goes green at 5:50 PM. The Grand Prix itself is Sunday at 3:00 PM: 56 laps of a 5.513-kilometre circuit.

None of that is happening yet where our drive begins. In Blanco, the coffee is still too hot to drink and the car is ticking as it warms. The plan on the passenger seat is simple. Run the Hill Country the long way, drop into Austin through the front door, then turn east for the track.

The route reads like a love letter to Texas road numbering. Take US 281 and FM 32, the Devil's Backbone, then FM 12 into Wimberley. Ranch Road 12 carries you north to Dripping Springs, and US 290 runs east into the city. From downtown, follow SH 71 east and SH 130 south to Elroy Road and COTA Boulevard.

Every one of those names is a mood. Every one is a reason to leave a little earlier than you think you need to.

The Backbone

Ask anyone who has driven it and they will tell you the Devil's Backbone does not announce itself. You come out of Blanco and the land starts to lift. Then FM 32 settles onto a limestone ridge between Blanco and Wimberley, and the world falls away on either side.

Overlook Maps describes the road in plain, honest terms: it narrows, climbs, dips and curves along the ridge. That is exactly the right amount of drama. This is not a mountain pass. It is something more intimate, a two-lane line drawn across the top of the Hill Country, with views that make you want to lift off the throttle just to look.

There is a pull-off for the Devil's Backbone Overlook on the north side of the road. In a car built for the far end of the tachometer, stopping is its own kind of discipline. Do it anyway.

Shut the engine off and the silence rushes in. Wind moves through the cedar and grass. Somewhere below, a ranch dog is offering an opinion. The ridge runs off toward Wimberley, layered in blue-green haze, and for a minute race weekend feels like something happening to other people.

Back in the seat, the road asks for smooth hands rather than heroics. Brake in a straight line before the dips. Let the car settle. Look through the curve to where the ridge drops away.

Back Roads Texas, which maps the full loop at about 51 miles, also points out the Devil's Backbone Tavern in Fischer, a reminder that people have been driving out here for the scenery for a long time.

Ranch Road 12 and the long way around

FM 32 eventually ends at FM 12, and the drive turns north toward Wimberley. Visit Wimberley notes that the town is reached on Ranch Road 12 from both San Marcos and Dripping Springs. That matters, because RR 12 is the thread that stitches this whole western half of the drive together.

This is the stretch where the car starts to feel like a companion rather than a machine. The roads here are not wide and they are not in a hurry. Limestone cuts flash past. A creek crossing, a cattle guard, a hand-painted sign for pecans or peaches.

Picture the scene in Wimberley on a race-week morning. Somebody walking a dog stops at the corner and turns to watch you idle past. They are not sure what the car is. They are sure they like the sound.

That is half the joy of the drive in. The circuit is about speed in its purest, most measured form. The drive is about the people who see your car for twenty seconds, on an ordinary Friday, and smile anyway.

North of Wimberley, RR 12 delivers you to Dripping Springs. From there, US 290 points east. The land flattens and the traffic thickens. The first billboard with a racing car on it appears, then another. The Hill Country is behind you now. Ahead lies the city that, this week, has turned itself into a paddock.

Congress Avenue, race week

Austin does not do race week by halves. Downtown, the teams have moved in.

The Williams Fan Zone has taken up residence at 800 Congress Avenue from October 19 through 24. A few blocks south, Mercedes has a Fan Hub at 400 Congress from October 22 through 25.

Over on San Jacinto, Lando Norris's Original Service Dept. pop-up runs October 21 through 25. Red Bull's Austin Race Nights take over East 7th Street from October 22 to 25. The race-week guides read less like an event calendar and more like an invasion plan.

Congress Avenue is the spine of it all. Stand on the bridge over Lady Bird Lake and the avenue runs dead straight north to the dome of the Texas Capitol. There is a reason so many drives into this city end with a slow roll up this street.

Across the water, on Wednesday night, the Long Center was scheduled to host Road to the Race. It is the fourth edition of the free-to-the-public car show presented by COTA and The Exotics Network.

The lineup on paper was extraordinary: more than 100 hypercars and supercars, F1 display cars, a C-130J flyover, simulators and a charity auction benefiting the Long Center and Dell Children's.

The fine print was even better, because it told you what this kind of event asks of owners. Show-field cars had to arrive with no more than a quarter tank of fuel. Keys were handed over to the organizers, and cars stayed staged until 9:30 PM.

Think about that for a second. Bringing a car worth more than most houses to sit still for an evening, so that strangers and their kids can lean in close and take a picture, is its own kind of generosity. Race week runs on that generosity.

By Friday, the show field is history and the city has shifted gear. The talk in the coffee lines is about practice times and tire strategy. The cars on the street get a little more interesting with every block. Somewhere a valet is learning, very quickly, how to work a dihedral door.

East, toward the tower

Then comes the turn east, and the last, strangest stretch of the drive.

COTA's own directions are blunt about the essentials. If you are driving in, you need a pre-purchased parking pass. From Austin, take SH 130 south, a toll road, to Exit 451 at Elroy Road and turn left for about two miles. Or continue to Exit 453 at FM 812 and turn left for about a mile and a half.

If you would rather let someone else do the driving, rideshare drops off at North McAngus, with a free tram to the Grand Plaza. Official shuttles run from Waterloo Park downtown and the Travis County Expo Center on a dedicated bus lane. On Friday and Saturday, the last inbound shuttle leaves at 6:30 PM; on Sunday, it leaves at 2:00 PM.

The land out here is wide open, and that is what makes the first sight of the circuit so arresting. It starts as a red line against the sky. Then it resolves into the Observation Tower: 251 feet of steel designed by Austin's Miró Rivera Architects.

Its red tubes sweep down to form the canopy of the amphitheater at its base. Up top, a viewing deck has a glass-floored section for anyone who wants to look straight down.

Beyond it lies the circuit itself: 3.426 miles, 20 turns and 133 feet of elevation change. Turn 1, the climb to "Big Red", is a blind uphill hairpin at the top of the hill. Even from the parking lot, you can feel the scale of the place in your chest.

The track opened on October 21, 2012, when Mario Andretti took the first laps in a Lotus 79, and it hosted its first United States Grand Prix that November. Every car rolling down Elroy Road this morning is part of a story that is now more than a decade deep.

And then, faintly at first, you hear it.

This is a support-paddock weekend, too. Masters Historic and the Porsche Carrera Cup North America are on the bill alongside F1 and F1 Academy. So the sound drifting over the fields could be anything: a historic Formula 1 car being exercised, a field of Porsches, or the real thing. You park, you open the door, and the air is different. It smells of hot brakes and sunscreen and food trucks.

The gates

There is a moment at the gates that every person who has ever driven to a race knows. The car is parked and the engine is cooling. Your legs are still humming from the road, and for a second you stand in the crowd and look back the way you came.

West, past the prairie and the city and the ridge, is the Backbone. The same morning that started with a cold engine in Blanco now ends here, in a crowd of people who all, in their own way, made the same pilgrimage.

The illustration at the top of this story imagines the start of it all: a low sun over the hills and a two-lane with nobody else on it. Here at the gates, the day is draining out of the sky in amber. It is the image of a drive ending, and of a weekend just beginning.

If you are not in Austin this weekend, the drive in is still yours. MotorTexas lists the Gears and Beers Car Show in Johnson City on Saturday. On Sunday, its monthly Coffee with Cars in Dripping Springs gathers on Ranch Road 12 itself. Wherever you are, there is a two-lane somewhere with your name on it, and a destination worth arriving at slowly.

And if you would rather not take the long way alone, Exotics Group rallies are a good place to find a convoy of people who believe the drive in counts as much as the destination.

So pick your Backbone, wherever it is, leave early, take the long way and let the drive in be the best part of your weekend.

Sources

• Formula 1: 2026 United States Grand Prix timetable
• Circuit of The Americas, Formula 1 Pirelli United States Grand Prix event page
• Circuit of The Americas, Know Before You Go
• Circuit of The Americas, Directions
• Circuit of The Americas, Shuttles
• Circuit of The Americas, COTA Crash Course
• Circuit of The Americas, All about the COTA Tower
• Miró Rivera Architects, Observation Tower
• Wikipedia, Circuit of the Americas
• The Exotics Network, Road to the Race
• CultureMap Austin, F1 events and parties 2026
• It's Race Week, Austin destination guide
• Back Roads Texas, A Guide to the Devil's Backbone Road
• Overlook Maps, Devil's Backbone byway
• My Scenic Drives, Devil's Backbone
• Visit Wimberley, Locale
• MotorTexas, Austin car shows
• MotorTexas, Coffee with Cars Dripping Springs