Drivers try to figure out sticky Bristol surface

The moment practice ended at Bristol Motor Speedway, Kurt Busch climbed the steep banking of the concrete bullring. He checked the track temperature in several spots, then used his shoes to test the grip of the surface as he scuffed his way back down.

There’s a sticky situation heading into Sunday’s race in Thunder Valley, and it’s causing fits for the drivers.

“It’s tough to trust, it’s tough to predict,” said Busch, a five-time Bristol winner.

Bristol officials applied a VHT resin to the track surface that is intended to enhance grip. The TrackBite is much wider than it was last summer, when Bristol first tried it in August in an effort to make a stronger second lane. The top lane for years had been the preferred line, but the wider swath of VHT seems to have made the bottom of the track the place to be as drivers used limited practice time to prepare for Sunday.

Intermittent rain at Bristol has wiped out a ton of the notes drivers have gathered about the surface because every time they think they’ve figured out a lane, the showers wash off any tire rubber that has accumulated. The Xfinity Series race was stopped for rain Saturday, hours after the Cup drivers had completed their final practice.

“The surface was real slick and then it was really

grippy and then it started to slicken back up,” Brad Keselowski said. “It’s going to be an evolving surface race, so that just means it’s going to be tough. We’re supposed to be the best, so we’ll have to figure it out.

“It’s changing faster than I can keep up with it. This will be a weekend full of things we’ve never seen before, which usually means the field is privy to making a lot of mistakes, a lot of action, a lot of wrecks and that’s not always a bad thing.”

Seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson said the driver’s council met during the fall and was in favor of Bristol continuing to explore using the VHT because “we were all eager to make sure it was back down and thought that it did offer more options.

“I welcome any change that might be thrown at us and any opportunity to create different lanes and searching around the race track,” he said.

Only every time on the track, the bottom lane is where everyone wants to be — all but current points leader Kyle Larson.

Larson, who starts on the pole, was among only a handful trying to run near the wall during practice. It almost bit him Saturday when he spun and clipped the outside wall. It caused only cosmetic damage to his car.