{"id":44869,"date":"2024-03-14T10:45:59","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T15:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=44869"},"modified":"2024-03-17T10:17:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T15:17:31","slug":"nascar-weekend-preview-bristol-motor-speedway-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/14\/nascar-weekend-preview-bristol-motor-speedway-4\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Weekend Preview: Bristol Motor Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Cup drivers eager for return to traditional surface at Bristol<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to find something concrete to say about Sunday\u2019s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\"\"

Christopher Bell, driver of the #20 Reser’s Fine Foods Toyota, and Denny Hamlin, driver of the #11 FedEx Freight Direct Toyota, lead the field on a pace lap prior to the NASCAR Cup Series Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on September 16, 2023 in Bristol, Tennessee. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

For the past three seasons, NASCAR Cup Series drivers have spent the spring event at Bristol racing on Tennessee red clay, 2,300 truckloads worth.<\/p>\n

This year, however, dirt won\u2019t be covering the concrete surface for the first race at the .533-mile track. Under the circumstances, you might think Christopher Bell would be chagrined at the loss of an opportunity to defend last year\u2019s win on the dirt surface.<\/p>\n

Instead, Bell waxed almost euphoric about the prospect of two 2024 Bristol races on the high-banked concrete. In his last two Bristol Night Races, Bell ran fourth in 2022 and third in 2023 after winning the pole.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love racing at Bristol,\u201d said Bell, who almost assuredly cemented his place in the 2024 Playoffs with his victory last Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. \u201cIt\u2019s literally my favorite race on the schedule. I\u2019m very thankful we get to go twice this year. It\u2019s been a track we have excelled at the last couple of times we have been there\u2014we\u2019ve been close.<\/p>\n

\u201cBristol is another important race for us; you don\u2019t win the Championship there, but you can definitely lose it if you\u2019re not good. Having a versatile car is the key to a good run at Bristol. We know the bottom will be good because they are spraying the resin (traction compound) down, and we know the top is going to come in at some point, so you have to have a car that can really run both places.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s from a driver who grew up racing on dirt and won three straight Chili Bowl Nationals during NASCAR off seasons.<\/p>\n

The last driver to win a spring Bristol race on concrete was Brad Keselowski in 2020, a feat he accomplished from the pole. Keselowski, however, hasn\u2019t won a Cup race since April 25, 2021 at Talladega, his last year with Team Penske.<\/p>\n

Now an owner\/driver with RFK Racing, the 2012 series champion saw his drought reach 102 races with last week\u2019s fourth-place run at Phoenix.<\/p>\n

With eight victories, Kyle Busch is far and away the leading active winner at Bristol, but like Keselowski, Busch has switched teams\u2014from Joe Gibbs Racing to Richard Childress Racing\u2014since his last victory at the .533-mile short track in the spring of 2019.<\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin, who won last year\u2019s Bristol Night Race, is tied with Keselowski with three victories at the track, second-most among active drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a purist, I love seeing this race back on the concrete,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cObviously, as the last guy that won there, it\u2019s going to be good to go back there and kind of test what this car wants compared to what we had in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to tweak on it, but we feel like we\u2019ve got a good base setup with what we had last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of high speeds and extreme loads in the corners\u2014Bristol is billed as the \u201cWorld\u2019s Fastest Half-Mile\u201d\u2014Cup drivers won\u2019t be using the new short-track package that debuted last Sunday at Phoenix.<\/p>\n

Rajah Caruth can continue historic run on Bristol\u2019s high banks<\/b><\/p>\n

The NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series returns to action after a week off, and Spire Motorsports driver Rajah Caruth has a chance at another career milestone in Saturday night\u2019s Weather Guard Truck Race at Bristol Motor Speedway (8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

With a victory from the pole in the March 1 Truck Series event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Caruth became the third African-American driver to win a NASCAR national series race, joining NASCAR Hall of Famer Wendell Scott and Bubba Wallace.<\/p>\n

Should Caruth win at Bristol on Saturday, he would be the eighth driver in the series to win his first and second races in consecutive starts, joining Rich Bickle (1997), Kurt Busch (2000), Ted Musgrave (2001), Todd Bodine (2004), Kasey Kahne (2004), Kyle Busch (2005) and Johnny Benson Jr. (2006).<\/p>\n

An alumnus of NASCAR\u2019s Drive for Diversity program, Caruth credits that initiative with his rise to national-level racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really the only reason I was able to go from sim racing to real-life,\u201d Caruth said on Monday during a Zoom call with reporters. \u201cAside from that, I didn\u2019t have any path to race in real life\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThey not only gave me my shot in 2019, they also gave me the time to develop\u2026 They allowed me to grow. I showed up every day, trying to get better, working on the cars, learning how to race. They\u2019re the only reason I got to this point now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In trying to win a second straight race, Caruth will face a daunting challenge\u2014from Spire Motorsports teammate Kyle Busch, a five-time Truck Series winner at Bristol. The all-time series leader with 65 victories, Busch is making his third start of the season after winning at Atlanta and finishing 15th at Las Vegas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service NASCAR Cup drivers eager for return to traditional surface at Bristol It\u2019s not hard to find something concrete to say about Sunday\u2019s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). For the past three seasons, NASCAR Cup Series drivers have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":43210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[177,16],"class_list":["post-44869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-bristol-motor-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/GettyImages-1685530489-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-bFH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44871,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44869\/revisions\/44871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}