After two consecutive weekends in the deserts around Phoenix and Las Vegas, the NASCAR Cup Series has traded low-banked tracks and asphalt for an entirely different surface in the East.
NASCAR will run the Food City 500 on Sunday afternoon on the steep, concrete layout of the Bristol Motor Speedway short track in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee.
This time a year ago, BMS had something in common with the arid regions, not the racing surfaces, that NASCAR just left after two entertaining races.
Dirt.
Starting in 2021, Bristol’s spring race was transformed into a dirt bullring where Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and Christopher Bell recorded wins.
But racing fans’ quest for dirt racing, a popular form around the country, seemingly ran its course, especially at BMS — a coliseum-like arena where drivers bumped and banged on the high banks at high speeds, often with tempers that elevated like the surrounding mountains.
Good dirt racing requires moisture, and wetness creates mud. NASCAR’s decision to keep the windshields in the cars became a muddy conflict, while dryness would create dust that would hinder fans’ visibility.
After what was just a bad fit, the powers that be decided it was time to ditch the dirt at the track dubbed “The Last Great Colosseum.”
In short, Bristol’s a big deal.
The site of an NFL exhibition between Washington and the Philadelphia Eagles in 1961 and a major college matchup between Tennessee and Virginia Tech in 2016, BMS is back to concrete for the foreseeable future.
RFK Racing’s Brad Keselowski won Bristol’s last spring 500-lapper on May 31, 2020. It was the fifth race back after COVID shut down the campaign for two months following the Phoenix race that Logano won.
Of the active drivers on BMS’ concrete, Kyle Busch leads with eight victories, but he has not won in Bristol since the spring of 2019.
Darrell Waltrip holds the all-time record with 12 triumphs.
In the past two summer night races on the .533-mile short track’s concrete, Bell finished fourth and third and earned a pole.
“I love racing at Bristol,” said the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who roasted the field Sunday in Arizona on the final restart. “It’s literally my favorite race on the schedule. I’m very thankful we get to go twice this year. It’s been a track we have excelled at the last couple of times we have been there — we’ve been close.”
Like Keselowski, Denny Hamlin owns three Bristol wins — all in the night race — including the most recent one last September.
“As a purist, I love seeing this race back on the concrete,” said Hamlin, who also scored BMS wins in 2012 and 2019. “Obviously, as the last guy that won there, it’s going to be good to go back there and kind of test what this car wants compared to what we had in the past.
“We’re going to have to tweak on it, but we feel like we’ve got a good base setup with what we had last year.”
Due to the high speeds and high banks, NASCAR will not use the short-track package this week that it debuted on Phoenix’s flat track.
