Waltrip on his brutal debut at Bristol

For nearly four years in the early

1980s, Darrell Waltrip owned Bristol Motor Speedway.

Waltrip won an astonishing seven races in a row there between 1981 and

1984, a record that might never be broken. Overall, he won a record 12 races at the iconic track and had 26 top-five finishes, tied for best all time.

So few drivers have known how to handle the half-mile oval better than Waltrip, a 2012 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee. But it wasn’t always so.

Waltrip, now a Fox Sports analyst for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, recalled his first race at Bristol.

“The first time I competed at Bristol was in an old Mercury with (crew chief ) Jake Elder,” Waltrip said. “Going in, Jake told me, ‘You know this place is notorious for wearing out drivers and you have to be a tough SOB to run 500 laps.’ I had been running a fiberglass seat in my Late Model races, and Jake told me I wouldn’t last 50 laps in that seat at Bristol.

“I laughed at him, but boy, was I wrong. Only 50 laps into the race, I was patting my helmet, the signal that I needed a relief driver. I was falling out of the seat, with my arms killing me, my neck breaking and me feeling like I was going to die. That fiberglass seat was eating me up. I came in, and Dick Brooks got in my car for 50 or 100 laps. I got back in afterward, backed it down to pace myself and learned a valuable lesson. Five-hundred laps at Bristol is the most grueling thing you’ll ever do. It literally takes everything a driver has to hang on there.”

Kyle Busch, coming off a win in Texas last weekend, and his brother Kurt seem to be the modern-day “owners” of the track, with 11 Cup victories between them. Last August, Kyle Busch won three races there in one weekend: the Cup race, the Xfinity race and the Camping World truck race. Waltrip calls the feat “the most impressive thing” he’s ever seen a driver do there. That’s why he picks Busch to win Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol (Fox 2 p.m. ET).

“He’s always good at Bristol and has been running extremely well,” Waltrip said. “But I don’t think he will run away with it. Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski should be strong.”