The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Rain postpones race at dirt track
NASCAR’s hyped return to dirt is instead a muddy mess on hold at least until March 29. Torrential rains flooded campgrounds and parking lots surrounding Bristol Motor Speedway.
NASCAR’s hyped return to dirt is instead a muddy mess on hold at least until March 29.
Torrential rains flooded campgrounds and parking lots surrounding Bristol Motor Speedway and created a rut for NASCAR far deeper than anything the Cup Series drivers encountered on the track.
NASCAR canceled all March 28 activity because even if Bristol’s converted dirt track could eventually be readied for night racing, the entire facility was a swampy mess. Grandstand seats that had been covered in dust were caked in mud, while pit road and the apron around the 0.533mile bullring held several inches of standing water.
After 2 ½ inches of rain fell across “Thunder Valley,” NASCAR made an atypical decision to call an early washout. The first Cup Series race on dirt since 1970 was rescheduled for 4 p.m. March 29; trucks were set to run at noon.
Somewhere, Tony Stewart likely was having a hearty laugh at Bristol’s expense.
Stewart successfully hosted seven Truck Series races at his Eldora Speedway dirt track in Ohio, but when Fox asked NASCAR to put a dirt event on the Cup schedule, the date instead went to the concrete bullring at Bristol. An incensed Stewart declined to bring the Trucks back to Eldora this year out of spite and has sat back and watched from afar as Bristol attempted to tackle the challenges of a dirt race.
He openly fretted that a bad show at Bristol would damage the future of NASCAR dirt racing — and NASCAR itself seemed to admit it was a valid concern.
“We need this show to be great,” Scott Miller, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, said March 27.
Stewart, who has insisted Eldora can successfully host the Cup Series, declined to comment March 28 when reached by The Associated Press.
“I’m not getting my hands dirty,” he said.
In fairness to Bristol parent company Speedway Motorsports, its CEO has been unafraid to take risks and spend considerable money in an effort to bring new energy into the sport. Marcus Smith converted centerpiece Charlotte Motor Speedway into a hybrid oval and road course “roval” that in three years has become one of the more popular events on the NASCAR schedule and last season added IMSA sports cars to enhance the weekend experience.
So Smith was all-in on offering Bristol for the Cup experiment on dirt, and his staff spent six months converting the concrete oval with 2,300 truckloads of red Tennessee clay. The track was ready in time to host the Bristol Dirt Nationals a week ago, when Super Late Models, Sport Mods, Modifieds and 602 Late Models raced largely without issue.
Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon competed and NASCAR leaned on both for guidance during this weird weekend.
Issues began to crop up March 26 when Cup and Trucks held their practice sessions. The dust that kicked up from the dirt was thick, but the main concern was the durability of the tires provided by Goodyear. Drivers reported significant wear down to the cords on their tires and the 3,400-pound stock cars were tearing up the track surface.
NASCAR made tweaks to in-race procedures to allot additional time for track prep and granted teams an additional set of tires for the race. When rain stopped March 27, the trucks were sent out to start heat races, but it took just one lap for the rain-soaked track to splatter windshields with a thick layer of mud and cake the front grilles — putting every competitor into a blinding situation with a fear of an overheating engine.
Larson felt the track conditions at the start of the heat races would have created the best dirt racing NASCAR had ever seen, but the cars had not been transformed for the event.
“If dirt racing became a thing, I think we could develop a tire that could handle the loads at a track like Bristol, and this kind of dirt, they could stay together and put on good racing,” Larson said March 28.
“And if dirt racing is a thing, then maybe we should develop something where we don’t run with windshields and we can change around the radiators so that we could have raced in Saturday’s conditions.”
A week earlier, Larson led a feedback session on track prep during a driver meeting at the Dirt Nationals and, as one of the top dirt racers in the country, he is one of the most knowledgeable on site and willing to advise both NASCAR and the track staff.