By Aaron Bearden
Christopher Bell won his way into the playoffs last year at Bristol Motor Speedway. But rolling into this year’s spring weekend, the Championship 4 qualifier didn’t have the mojo that comes with defending a win.
Why? Because the track is back to concrete after three years of spring races on dirt.
“I don’t feel like the defending race winner,” Bell said Saturday. “It feels like we are at a different venue right now, compared to what it was 12 months ago.
I”t is cool that I won the last dirt race. I take pride in that because I’m a dirt track racer. That’s what I grew up doing. But it definitely feels like a new venue. When you came here for the dirt race, it didn’t feel like you were at Bristol.”
Bell is one of three Cup drivers that won races on Bristol in its dirt configuration, joining Joey Logano (2021) and Kyle Busch (2022). NASCAR shifted the spring date to dirt in an effort to spruce up the schedule, making the race one unlike any other Cup ran.
The event was met with mixed reactions for its first weekend – one scuppered by rain that pushed the festivities to Monday. A shift to Easter weekend gave the race a unique holiday flair, but in the end Speedway Motorsports elected to return to the concrete for both races starting in 2024.
Chase Elliott thinks the decision to revert to the old formula may have been driven by cost.
“If we wonder why, it’s probably because of money,” Elliott said. “It’s cheaper for them to throw a little resin in the bottom groove than it was for them to dump-truck a bunch of dirt back in here.
“From the outside looking in, I guess it didn’t do what they wanted it to do, or we would still be doing it. Somewhere the numbers didn’t add up, would be my guess.”
With Bristol’s return to concrete comes an exodus of all races on dirt. Even the Craftsman Truck Series, which previously visited dirt tracks like Eldora Speedway and Knoxville Raceway, is avoiding the discipline entirely this year.
The absence of dirt has been met with mixed opinions from the garage.
Chase Briscoe, a graduate of the discipline that nearly won the 2022 edition of the Bristol Dirt race, feels NASCAR should have at least one race on dirt.
“I feel like we have to have a dirt race on the schedule,” Briscoe said. “Every discipline of racing – short track, road course, superspeedway, intermediate – we have (all of that) except for the dirt race. And a large majority of us grew up dirt racing. I think that crossover is big for our sport.”
Perhaps NASCAR’s most notable dirt driver, 2021 champion Kyle Larson, has the opposite opinion. Asked for his thoughts on the race’s legacy and whether he’d like to see NASCAR return to dirt, he only had one thing to say.
“No.”
Bell wouldn’t mind seeing dirt return, but would want to see more than one race if it happens.
“Whenever you have that single event, it becomes easy to overlook and then people don’t take it seriously,” he said. “We saw that in road course racing early on in the sport, where if you weren’t a good road course racer, you would just put it behind you … and (go) on to the next one.
“The dirt race was very much that same way. For all of the teams that didn’t have a dirt driver, it was kind of an off week for them, a throwaway event. The guys that had dirt drivers took it seriously, but I think if you want to go down that route you need to add two to three of them to make it a priority in the schedule, so that you have to actually have to work on it to become better and it becomes more of a real race.”
Briscoe wouldn’t mind a single race, but feels there should be no more than two. “I definitely think it could lose its luster if we do more than two,” he said. “Whether it’s one or two, I’d be happy.”
The Hoosier and Bell both believe Ohio’s Eldora Speedway could be a good option if NASCAR were to run multiple dirt races in the future. The Tony Stewart-owned facility is one of the few dirt venues that has the infrastructure and capabilities to host a Cup event.
Bristol Dirt’s Legacy
RFK Racing owner-driver Brad Keselowski isn’t clamoring for a return to dirt anytime soon. But the 2012 Cup champ doesn’t see Bristol Dirt as a failure, either. In his eyes, the race was important because of the flexibility it represented.
“I think the legacy was we’re not afraid to fail,” Keselowski said of the event. “The sport’s willing to try new things. I think that’s good.
“I don’t necessarily think the dirt race was a failure – there was some success out of it. I think it would be a failure the more you do it. It makes sense to do special events in a limited-time window of two-to-three years. It had ran that course. Now it’ll be interesting to see what the next thing is.
“I love that about our sport. I love that we’re willing to take chances. I love that the schedule is willing to be variable. I love that once we’ve done that we’re willing to say, ‘Okay, that’s enough, Let’s move on to the next thing.’”
Bristol Dirt is one of many unique events trialed in recent years. NASCAR’s held the Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and raced on a street course in Chicago. It’s sprinkled more road courses into the schedule, removed one of them to bring back the Brickyard 400 and brought back the iconic North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Is NASCAR likely to race on dirt again soon? No. The Cup series isn’t expected to return to the Coliseum or the Indianapolis road course, either.
And that’s okay. It’s just a sign of the times in an ever-adapting sport.
“There’s a lot of drivers that are glad to be back on the concrete,” Keselowski said. “That doesn’t mean the dirt was a failure. It ran its course and now it’s time for the next new thing.”
(Top photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
