TRUCKS: Bristol Still King After All These Years

Camping World Trucks

TRUCKS: Bristol Still King After All These Years

Bristol Motor Speedway is a modern marvel of a coliseum, an amped up amphitheater of speed...

Media Release | Posted August 25, 2012 Charlotte, NC

Timothy Peters drove his No. 17 Toyota to a commanding victory in Wednesday night's NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

Byrd's Eye View by Emmett Byrd for TruckSeries.com

For me Bristol Motor Speedway is a special place and always will be. The 0.533-mile oval kindles a lot of fond memories for this Tennessee native.

As the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series wrapped up their 13th race of the 2012 campaign with a dominating performance by Timothy Peters, I can’t help but harken back to my earliest visit as a gangly teenager to this scenic short track. The race was the Volunteer 400 on August 28, 1977 at Bristol International Speedway, my second NASCAR Winston Cup event after a visit to Atlanta in 1976. Cale Yarborough won the race in Junior Johnson’s Holly Farms Chevrolet, Darrell Waltrip was second and Benny Parsons came home third. It wasn’t the top three however that left the most lasting memory that day. It was two other events that left indelible marks. One was a grinding crash that took seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion Richard Petty out of the event. Petty has long mentioned this wreck as one of the worst in his storied career. The other was a gutty performance from a 39 year-old driver from Iowa City, Iowa named Janet Guthrie. One of NASCAR’s most fierce female competitors wrestled her Kelly Girl Chevrolet to a 6th place finish. Not a bad day’s work for a woman doing her best to take on the good ole boys of that day and finish ahead of the likes of Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Ricky Rudd, Neil Bonnett and Baker.

“I really did love that place,” said Guthrie. “And that race, we really hit the setup, right on the nose.”

Thirty-five years later, that sixth-place effort is still the best modern day finish in a NASCAR Cup event by a woman.

“You know, I don’t remember celebrating afterwards,” said Guthrie. “I just packed up and went home. But I was very happy about it. Very happy.”

Bristol today stands much the same as it did then from a competitive standpoint. Still very tough to navigate, with high speeds and tight, high banked corners. Everything else though has changed dramatically. In 1977 there were 12,000 fans parked in high school football type concrete bleachers on the front and back straightaways. Now 160,000 or more seats ring the world’s fastest half-mile racetrack in monolithic steel structures that tower high above the racing surface. It truly is a modern marvel of a coliseum, an amped up amphitheater of speed. Richard Petty once said racing at Bristol was like “flying jet fighters in a gymnasium.”

The Truck Series invaded Bristol for the first time on June 23rd 1995. Three-time World of Outlaws champion Sammy Swindell captured the pole position and Joe Ruttman captured the checkered flag by .13 seconds over Geoffrey Bodine. The next season saw Bruton Smith purchase the facility and as a Speedway Motorsports Inc. employee, I had a chance to run the media center for that second truck series contest. Rick Carelli won the race but once again that is not what stood out as the most memorable event. On lap 161 Mike Bliss tangled on the frontstretch with the trucks of Ron Hornaday Jr., Bobby Gill, and T.J. Clark. Bliss’ No. 2 climbed the frontstretch wall, turned on its side and took out a significant portion of the catchfence separating the trucks from the paying customers. It was all hands on deck as every single available SMI employee worked feverishly with pliers, wire, welding torches, chewing gum, paper clips, bobby pins and various other devices to get the catchfence repaired. We were climbing the fence way before Tony Stewart or Helio Castroneves made it vogue.

Since that night NASCAR heavyweights Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Mark Martin and Kyle Busch have continued the truck series legacy at Bristol. The Wednesday night barnburner has always been a fan favorite. It remains a favorite of the competitors as well. A win at Bristol garners a great deal of respect from one’s fellow competitors and a lifetime of memories. Short track racing remains the cornerstone of NASCAR competition and Bristol is the ultimate short track, the world’s fastest half-mile facility.

Wednesday night’s performance by Peters was one for the record books. The 31 year-old driver from Providence, N.C., led every lap, made every right move, sliced his way through traffic effortlessly and left no competitor with a chance to grab the win away from him. Peters knows that to win at this short track is a special bullet point on a driver’s resume.

“Winning at Bristol is just an absolutely unbelievable feeling,” Peters said the day after the race. “To drive up the ramp to Victory Lane and to get your picture taken with that old school trophy is a tremendous honor. You think about the legends of our sport who have made stock car racing what it is today and who have won there and to join them by winning at Bristol is just a very special feeling. Bristol is the last great coliseum, to go to Victory Lane there is one of the highlights of my career. Certainly you gain a little recognition from your fellow competitors when you win there. It shows that you know how to race on a tough track so hopefully I have earned their respect.”

One of my other fondest memories of Bristol is spotting for Peters when he made his first two starts in Bristol when he drove for Bobby Hamilton Racing. Now if he had only driven like he did last night I would have an even better memorable moment. The shortfall was probably the spotter’s fault.

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