After a lackluster initial short-track race at Martinsville on March 29 and then a weekend off for Easter, it’s time to get back to racing.
There are few better places to restart the NASCAR Cup Series season than the Last Great Colosseum, Bristol Motor Speedway.
Rested and refreshed after two weeks without turning left, drivers get back at it with Sunday’s Food City 500 (FS1, 3 p.m. ET), a scheduled 500-lapper that will cover 266.5 miles at the 0.533-mile layout in Tennessee.
While on hiatus, the Cup Series was upstaged last weekend as the other two national series headed to North Carolina’s sand hills and Rockingham Speedway, where 19-year-old William Sawalich earned his first win in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
“The Rock,” which hosted Cup races from 1966 to 2004, continues its gradual return to NASCAR racing. Rockingham may be following the same trail carved by North Wilkesboro Speedway, especially if more sellouts like last weekend are in store.
Rockingham has suffered from being in an oversaturated market. Atlanta, Darlington, Charlotte, North Wilkesboro, Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond — all within half-day treks — are all vying for the same “best bang for your buck” racing experience that lures the fans, whose spending dollars can only stretch across so many races.
The track may be tracing North Wilkesboro’s pathway for rebirth: Start with a touring series like CARS, get major national support series from NASCAR and maybe seek a future exhibition like the Clash or the All-Star Race. That approach worked for the Wilkes County track, which will hold its first Cup points race in three decades on July 19.
Back to Bristol.
With NASCAR bringing a new tire to BMS this weekend, the focus will be on wear and management, especially after the March 2024 race when rubber was coming apart and the drivers up front who finished 1-2-3 at Thunder Valley were seasoned veterans: winner Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski.
The trio was better at tire management and weathered nine cautions that put the slipping and sliding field under yellow for 98 laps and created 54 lead changes — a NASCAR short-track record.
Drivers also made 3,589 green-flag passes and 61 under green for the lead, both NASCAR records.
It was a messy day for the field as “tire degradation” became the buzz words on pit road. Many worried about the race’s completion because Goodyear was running out of rubber in the garage.
The grip itself was becoming as unreliable as a long-range weather forecast in the Volunteer State’s mountainous region, which is expecting its warmest day this week with Sunday’s 83-degree projection.
“The objective at our Bristol tire test in November was to develop a setup that is less temperature dependent at laying rubber down,” said Goodyear’s Racing Director of the Americas Justin Fantozzi. “We heard loudly from the teams about variations in weather between practice and race conditions, and the need for a tire solution to address this. The track took rubber in November under rather cold temperatures.”
The new package will be just another variable for NASCAR and the field to try and conquer at the sport’s most demanding bullring, where Kyle Larson is the defending Food City 500 champion.
