{"id":44872,"date":"2024-03-16T17:55:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T22:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=44872"},"modified":"2024-03-17T10:40:14","modified_gmt":"2024-03-17T15:40:14","slug":"nascar-saturday-notebook-bristol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/16\/nascar-saturday-notebook-bristol\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Saturday Notebook Bristol"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer  <\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service   <\/em><\/p>\n

Christopher Bell doesn\u2019t feel like a defending winner at Bristol<\/span><\/b> <\/p>\n

BRISTOL, Tenn. \u2014 When Christopher Bell won last year\u2019s spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway, he was elated to be the first true \u201cdirt driver\u201d to win on the red clay trucked in to cover the traditional concrete surface.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Christopher Bell. (Photo by James Gilbert\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The dirt is gone this year, and as a result, Bell says he won\u2019t feel like a defending winner in Sunday\u2019s Food City 500 (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).  \u201cI don\u2019t feel like the defending race winner,\u201d Bell said Saturday during a question-and-answer session with reporters at Bristol. \u201cIt feels like we are at a different venue right now, compared to what it was 12 months ago.  <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is cool that I won the last dirt race. I take pride in that because I\u2019m a dirt-track racer. That\u2019s what I grew up doing, but it definitely, definitely feels like a new venue. When you came here for the dirt race, it didn\u2019t feel like you were at Bristol.\u201d  <\/p>\n

The winner last Sunday at Phoenix, Bell perhaps is sanguine about his chances on the .533-mile concrete track because of his previous two finishes in the Bristol Night Race.  <\/p>\n

The driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was fourth on the concrete in 2022. Last year he started from the pole and finished third on the way to his second straight appearance in the Championship 4 race at Phoenix.  <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly been a while since we\u2019ve had a daytime race at Bristol, and I think it will probably be a little bit different, but no one knows how different it will be with the Next Gen car,\u201d Bell said.  <\/p>\n

\u201cOur team, at least, just found out that the treatment (traction compound) at the bottom is a little bit different (from) last year, so, yeah, it is going to be a little bit different than we\u2019ve had the last couple of years in Spring Bristol for sure. I can promise you that.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Kyle Busch has \u201cmusical\u201d answers to racing questions<\/b>  Asked why simulations haven\u2019t helped him master the short-track package on the Next Gen Cup car, Kyle Busch provided an answer more than vaguely reminiscent of a song recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, titled \u201cAin\u2019t Nothing Like the Real Thing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"

Kyle Busch. (Photo by Meg Oliphant\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI would say \u2018There\u2019s nothing like the real thing,\u2019\u201d Busch said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like the \u2018asphalt dyno,\u2019 as my dad would always say\u2014going to the racetrack with your stuff and competing against the rest of the competitors to see where your shortcomings are.\u201d  <\/p>\n

When it comes to racing at Bristol since the advent of NASCAR Next Gen Cup car, the converse of another song title comes to mind. Diamonds have not been a man\u2019s best friend, as far as Busch is concerned.  <\/p>\n

Although Busch has eight victories on the Bristol concrete, most among active drivers, his two finishes in the Next Gen car are 34th<\/sup> (with an engine failure) and 20th<\/sup>, two laps down.  <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d always run this place more round\u2026 like I would always try to make it as much of a circle as I possibly could, and now you kind of run this place in a diamond,\u201d Busch said. \u201cYou go up to the wall. You try to come off the wall. You come up the wall, you know what I mean? So it\u2019s more diamond-shaped.  <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a different way of running it. That seems to be a little bit more of the faster way this day in age. It\u2019s a different technique to get used to, but that\u2019s not to say that I can\u2019t do it. It\u2019s just a matter of sometimes you can\u2019t out-race your own equipment, and you\u2019ve got to go and get what you can get out of it, but nothing more.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Kevin Harvick\u2019s successor hopes to improve on a rough start<\/b>  <\/p>\n

\n

Sunoco rookie Josh Berry knew the transition from the NASCAR Xfinity Series to Cup racing wasn\u2019t going to be easy, especially since he is following 60-time winner Kevin Harvick in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.  A combination of bad luck and self-inflicted wounds has relegated Berry to 31st<\/sup> in the standings though four races. His best result of 20th<\/sup> came at Las Vegas, where he finished on the lead lap for the only time this season.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Josh Berry. (Photo by Chris Graythen\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a little bit disappointing,\u201d Berry acknowledged on Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway. \u201cEven when I started this going back to last summer, people asked me all the time what my expectations were, and I always said that I expected it to be hard\u2014and it is hard.   <\/p>\n

\u201cCup racing is hard. So with that side of it, I think each race, we\u2019ve had little-ish different things happen that maybe hurt our finish or not.\u201d  <\/p>\n

Back-to-back pit road speeding penalties at Atlanta definitely were a setback, as was a spin during qualifying at Phoenix.  <\/p>\n

\u201cI made a couple of mistakes over the last few weeks,\u201d Berry said. \u201cSpinning out in qualifying at Phoenix put us really far behind all these guys. All week, all they talk about is how you can\u2019t pass<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, having a mistake like that puts you really far behind and makes your day look worse than it really is, so, for me, it\u2019s just hopefully getting some of these mistakes out of the way early on and start qualifying a little bit better, and I think we\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer   NASCAR Wire Service    Christopher Bell doesn\u2019t feel like a defending winner at Bristol  BRISTOL, Tenn. \u2014 When Christopher Bell won last year\u2019s spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway, he was elated to be the first true \u201cdirt driver\u201d to win on the red clay trucked in to cover the traditional concrete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":41728,"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-44872","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\/03\/GettyImages-1472885873-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-bFK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44872","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=44872"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44893,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44872\/revisions\/44893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}