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Sprint Cup
CUP: Bristol A Stern Test
Bristol Motor Speedway is a fan favorite...
Bristol Motor Speedway is known to feature fireworks both on and off the track. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Darrell Waltrip likened it to flying a jet in your basement. Tony Stewart said it was like putting 43 cars in a blender. Welcome to Bristol Motor Speedway, the wildest and wooliest short track in all of NASCAR.
Built in 1961 in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Bristol has a well-deserved reputation for being a place where the wild and the unexpected happens with regularity. At 0.533 miles, it is a classic old-school, frammin’ and bammin’, in-your-face race track that’s as fierce a test of patience and control as there is in all of NASCAR. And it holds 160,000 rabid racing fans when it’s full.
It’s also a place where the facts collide with the myths and legends. Prior to its repaving in 2007, Bristol’s turns were advertised as being banked 36 degrees. As it turns out, that wasn’t quite true, just a number someone pulled out of the hat because it sounded good. Now, the track is progressively banked from 24 to 30 degrees, which is still plenty steep.
When the night race at Bristol was the toughest ticket in NASCAR, track officials used to say they had 2 million people on the waiting list for tickets. That, too, was evidently a bit of an exaggeration given that the race no longer is a sellout.
That story about the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins once playing a football game on the infield at Bristol? Well, believe it or not, that one really did happen, way back in ’61. Alas, track owner Bruton Smith’s 2005 offer of $20 million each to the University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech to play football at Bristol was declined.
Bristol is still a track that despite its diminutive length and exaggerated myths, in every sense is larger than life, a place that’s loud, claustrophobic, chaotic and one of the best tracks in NASCAR. And everybody who’s ever raced at Bristol has a story or two about it.
“All you have to do is go back and look at my first Cup race at Bristol back in 2001,” said Kurt Busch. “It wasn’t pretty. As a matter of fact, it was downright ugly. The first time I crashed that day, it was on my own. The second time I wrecked, I was in a big pileup. I guess you could say that the third time was the charm, in that we punctured the radiator in that crash.”
And Busch is someone who’s really good at Bristol. In fact, his five career Sprint Cup victories tie him with Jeff Gordon for most among active drivers.
Without question, all of the drivers are keenly aware of how Bristol can turn around and bite them.
“You just don’t realize how quickly everything happens at Bristol,” said Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. “You could have the best car out there, but everything is completely out of your hands. One minute, you could be running in the lead and, just seconds later, you could be wrecked in the corner and out of the race and it would be no fault of your own. You won’t even realize what has happened to you until afterward.”
“Bristol is one of those places where you’ve got to have everything kind of go your way,” said Stewart, Newman’s boss and teammate at SHR. “If you have one hiccup, it’s hard to recover from it. We’ve only won one race there and we’ve kind of been all over the board. It’s been feast or famine for us. It’s like if you have one problem in the first half of the race, it’s hard to recover from it. It makes for a very long day. We’ve had more long days than good days.”
Stewart isn’t alone in that assessment.
“I’ve gotten involved in accidents running in the back and I’ve gotten into accidents while running in the top 10,” said Kasey Kahne, driver of the No. 9 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford. “Trouble can find you anywhere on that track so that’s probably the biggest challenge when you go into a race at a place like Bristol.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.
Built in 1961 in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Bristol has a well-deserved reputation for being a place where the wild and the unexpected happens with regularity. At 0.533 miles, it is a classic old-school, frammin’ and bammin’, in-your-face race track that’s as fierce a test of patience and control as there is in all of NASCAR. And it holds 160,000 rabid racing fans when it’s full.
It’s also a place where the facts collide with the myths and legends. Prior to its repaving in 2007, Bristol’s turns were advertised as being banked 36 degrees. As it turns out, that wasn’t quite true, just a number someone pulled out of the hat because it sounded good. Now, the track is progressively banked from 24 to 30 degrees, which is still plenty steep.
When the night race at Bristol was the toughest ticket in NASCAR, track officials used to say they had 2 million people on the waiting list for tickets. That, too, was evidently a bit of an exaggeration given that the race no longer is a sellout.
That story about the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins once playing a football game on the infield at Bristol? Well, believe it or not, that one really did happen, way back in ’61. Alas, track owner Bruton Smith’s 2005 offer of $20 million each to the University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech to play football at Bristol was declined.
Bristol is still a track that despite its diminutive length and exaggerated myths, in every sense is larger than life, a place that’s loud, claustrophobic, chaotic and one of the best tracks in NASCAR. And everybody who’s ever raced at Bristol has a story or two about it.
“All you have to do is go back and look at my first Cup race at Bristol back in 2001,” said Kurt Busch. “It wasn’t pretty. As a matter of fact, it was downright ugly. The first time I crashed that day, it was on my own. The second time I wrecked, I was in a big pileup. I guess you could say that the third time was the charm, in that we punctured the radiator in that crash.”
And Busch is someone who’s really good at Bristol. In fact, his five career Sprint Cup victories tie him with Jeff Gordon for most among active drivers.
Without question, all of the drivers are keenly aware of how Bristol can turn around and bite them.
“You just don’t realize how quickly everything happens at Bristol,” said Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. “You could have the best car out there, but everything is completely out of your hands. One minute, you could be running in the lead and, just seconds later, you could be wrecked in the corner and out of the race and it would be no fault of your own. You won’t even realize what has happened to you until afterward.”
“Bristol is one of those places where you’ve got to have everything kind of go your way,” said Stewart, Newman’s boss and teammate at SHR. “If you have one hiccup, it’s hard to recover from it. We’ve only won one race there and we’ve kind of been all over the board. It’s been feast or famine for us. It’s like if you have one problem in the first half of the race, it’s hard to recover from it. It makes for a very long day. We’ve had more long days than good days.”
Stewart isn’t alone in that assessment.
“I’ve gotten involved in accidents running in the back and I’ve gotten into accidents while running in the top 10,” said Kasey Kahne, driver of the No. 9 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford. “Trouble can find you anywhere on that track so that’s probably the biggest challenge when you go into a race at a place like Bristol.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.
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