It seems hard to fathom the idea considering where Bristol Motor Speedway stood in the pantheon of racetracks 20 years ago, but NASCAR is probably thrilled to have its premier series move away from the short track during the most heightened part of 2024.
“Thrilled” and “Bristol” once went hand-in-hand. Not this time.
As the Cup Series drivers prepare to tackle Sunday’s Round of 12 opener at Kansas Speedway, the reality of last weekend is that the famed Bristol Night Race — the race folks had to get on a waiting list for in the 1990s– was a dud last Saturday.
In fact, if you took away the race-inside-the-race drama of championship-contending drivers trying to cross the cutline and secure a spot in the next round of the playoffs, Bristol’s showing was, at best, an enjoyable moment only for Kyle Larson and Hendrick Motorsports fans.
Larson was that good — great, actually — winning by 7.088 seconds over runner-up Chase Elliott.
In 1973, the late Cale Yarborough was at the point on all 500 laps to win the Southeastern 500 at Bristol, but Larson leading 92.4 percent (462 laps) of any race, especially at the top level, is nothing short of almost scorched-earth decimation of the field.
However, if the 500-lapper last Saturday night in the Tennessee Appalachian Mountains were a movie, it certainly followed the sequencing of most Hollywood continuing narratives: The first one (March’s spring race) was a red-hot blockbuster that fans raved about while leaving the speedway, but “Bristol 2, The Sequel” … not so much.
Fourth-place finisher Denny Hamlin, who charged his way out of the playoff’s basement and advanced to the Round of 12 at the expense of teammate Ty Gibbs, has an idea why the tires were such a problem.
“You’ve got to wear out the left-side tires,” Hamlin said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast Monday. “They are key to lap-time fall-offs. Once you wear out the lefts, the pressure goes on the rights and you’re going to wear out all four tires.”
In deeming the tire situation a “swing and a miss” Saturday, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver added: “You saw a really good movie in the spring, and now here’s the second portion of the movie. And it bombed.”
That’s too bad because it was probably the largest Bristol crowd in a decade.
As for Kansas, it will be almost impossible for it to match its finish on May 5, a sensational thriller that featured the closest margin of victory in NASCAR history — a 0.001-second photo finish by Larson over Chris Buescher after a two-lap shootout.
Larson didn’t run roughshod over the competition in that one, leading 64 circuits, while Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota paced the way for a race-high 71 laps. Runner-up Buescher had his No. 17 Ford at the front 53 times as the three drivers led 188 of the 268 laps.
23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick is the Kansas playoff race’s defending champion, having edged his team’s co-owner Hamlin by 0.327 seconds last September.
Hamlin and Joey Logano, four-time and three-time Kansas winners, respectively, join Larson, Reddick and Chase Elliott as title contenders with previous victories at the 1.5-mile venue.
–Field Level Media