This weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series makes their first visit of the year to the high banks at Bristol Motor Speedway. Coverage of the NASCAR Cup
Series Food City 500 will start with NASCAR RaceDay on FOX Sports 1 at 1:30 p.m. ET. Race coverage will begin at 3 p.m. ET with the green flag around 3:15 p.m. ET. Radio coverage will be provided by local MRN Radio affiliates and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
(Channel 90).
Records and facts
Last year's Food City 500 will be remembered best for a litany of tire issues that made everyone worried that NASCAR was not going to be able to finish the full distance due to a lack of tires. Tire wear was incredible.
The race ultimately saw those who were the best at saving their tires come to the front. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin ended up fighting for the win.
Truex was able to run Hamlin down in lapped traffic and took the lead with 18 laps to
go. However, Hamlin was able to get Truex back two laps later. From there, Hamlin was able to hold on to take the win.
Hamlin won by 1.083 seconds over Truex. Brad Keselowski was third, then Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson. They were the only five drivers on the lead lap at the finish.
The race set a number of all-time NASCAR records. The 54 lead changes were not only a record for Bristol, but an all-time NASCAR record for lead changes on a short track.
Kyle Busch is the winningest active driver at Bristol Motor Speedway with nine career
victories. Eight have come on the concrete, while one was on the dirt in 2022. Hamlin has four wins, while Keselowski and Joey Logano have three (Logano has two on concrete and one on dirt while Keselowski's three are on concrete). Larson and Jimmie Johnson (not entered) have two each.
All-time, Darrell Waltrip has the most wins at Bristol with 12, including a stretch of
seven in a row. Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace and Cale Yarborough each had nine wins, while Kurt Busch had six.
Track Facts
Track / Race
Length: 0.533-mile oval, 500 laps (266.5 miles)
Banking: 24-28 degrees
Straights: 650 ft., banked 4-9 degrees
Grandstand Seating: 153,000
Pit Road Speed: 30 mph
Pace
Car Speed: 35 mph
Opened: 1960 (first Cup race in 1961)
Website: http://www.bristolmotorspeedway.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ItsBristolBaby
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ItsBristolBaby
Pre-Race Schedule:
Practice: Saturday, April 12, 2 - 2:55 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime Video
Qualifying: Saturday, April 12 at 3:05 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime Video
Say What!
"Bristol’s one of my favorite tracks, if not my favorite. I love going there, it’s obviously a great place. It reminds me of the local short track atmosphere that you
get on Saturday nights, growing up racing late models and things like that. It’s a lot of fun, I love the banking, I love the concrete and just the nature of that place. It’s gotten a little bit tougher over the years to be as good as I once was there. Everybody’s kind of picked up on it. It’s definitely one of the coolest tracks that we get a chance to go run on. And obviously, the speed that you carry there and the close nature to action, whether you run the bottom or whether you run the top,
there’s just a lot of options." - Kyle Busch
"Bristol is tough. It morphs from practice to the race. It’s weird because sometimes you get up to the fence in practice and sometimes you don’t. It just depends on how many marbles get laid down, so you have to really just kind of go back on previous races. I feel like you have to
be in the mindset of change there because you go through it all weekend. I don’t think you ever feel fully comfortable at Bristol because it’s changing so often throughout the weekend and the race. All you can do is do the best you can." - Ryan Blaney
"I think, first off to answer that, is I think being in Group B in practice is always gonna help that, and we’ve been fortunate enough to be in that, so that’s a positive. The PJ1 on the bottom is always gonna have grip once
it’s activated, but then you see 25-30 laps into a run that top lane really coming into play and they’re pretty even at that time, so then it becomes a clean air game of whichever lane is kind of open. The track does go through changes a lot. Bristol is very unique with very temperature sensitive. I know this weekend is gonna be cold and I know that race where we had all the rubber build-up, I think it was a different compound that was laid down with resin, but it was a cold race,
so you don’t really know what to expect. You know though, for the most part, that the top lane is going to come in at some point and I feel you need to practice that at some point in practice to see what you have up there, and once the PJ1 is activated it’s kind of acts like a slot car. That’s what it feels like. It feels really fast. You get in a rhythm there where you’re just kind of clicking off laps and everything feels the same in my past, but the track goes through
changes where the PJ1 might be more activated and we eventually towards the end of the race pick it up and it becomes a lot of rubber laid down down there and it becomes pretty sketchy. I have some attention of how I want my car to feel in that top lane. I was able to learn a few things during the second Bristol last year that I hopefully will be able to apply to this year, that I felt were some major positives, so hopefully we qualify well and just have a solid day." - Zane Smith
"Bristol [Motor Speedway] is a place that I really enjoy being able to go and somewhere that has suited my driving
style. I think the car matters a lot at Bristol – I’ve had some good cars at Bristol; I still haven’t won a race there, which makes me want it more but I’ve run well there and finished up front – we just need to qualify well." - John Hunter Nemechek
Phil Allaway is the Newsletter Manager for Frontstretch. He can be
reached via e-mail at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of Nigel Kinrade
Photography.
