BRISTOL, Tenn. — Bristol Motor Speedway oozes character from each tiny crack in its concrete surface.
Five hundred laps under the lights here, the toughest ticket in NASCAR, is a sight to see for sure. The racing, 43 fighters crammed into a bullring a half-mile long, is intense and riddled with action sequences that would make Hollywood jealous. The atmosphere in the stands above, some 160,000 lined up row after row, is even more amazing.
“I didn’t think you could make Bristol any cooler and any more fun, but they have,” Jeff Gordon said.
A re-paving project — started and completed since the Nextel Cup Series last visited Bristol in March — took away the cracks in the surface and replaced them with smooth squares of concrete.
Character, however, remained. It’s just different now that there are defined racing grooves all over rather than the bottom being the only place to be.
Saturday night’s Sharpie 500 marked a shift in the style of racing at Bristol. Winner Carl Edwards and second-place Kasey Kahne spanked everybody, leading all but 13 laps. Their ridiculously dominant cars aside, the new surface allowed for two- and three-wide racing everywhere but the front.
The long green-flag runs were in part because, finally, there is room to race. The days of nose-to-tail traffic hugging the apron and excessive beating and banging appear to be over.
“The reason that we hit one another so much is because it’s one groove,” Gordon said. “In the past, it’s been action, not racing. There’s a big difference between good racing and just cars sliding and getting spun out and cautions every 20 or 30 laps.”
Denny Hamlin immediately noticed the increase in workspace.
“There’s a lot more room for error, I guess you could say,” Hamlin said.
Saturday afternoon, former driver Brett Bodine treated a select few to rides around Bristol, scattered with Bodine’s expert analysis on the track’s facelift. Bodine is NASCAR’s director of cost research and drives the pace car during Nextel Cup events. His lone victory came in 1990 at North Wilkesboro.
Buckled up and riding shotgun with Bodine in a souped-up Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS showed just what the drivers had been talking about all day Friday.
Bodine confirmed that adding three feet to the track’s width is a ton of space considering there’s hardly any to begin with. The transitions in and out of the corners are far more gradual, allowing drivers to pick and choose their entry and exit. And the banking is concave in appearance rather than flat from apron to soft wall.
(A quick peek at the speedometer revealed Bodine eclipsed 80 miles per hour in a three-lap run. And yes, the wall really is that close.)
“Totally different,” Bodine said. “I wish I could race here.”
Bodine can’t, but Gordon did.
“I’m telling you,” Gordon said, “I’m driving around here thinking this is the first time I’ve ever been here. Now it’s a little more of a momentum track. I think the configuration and the transitions in and off the corners are phenomenal. They’ve basically made this track have more room to race on.”
Only three times in the past 22 Bristol races have there been less than 10 caution flags. Saturday was one of those nights with only nine, and five of them came in the final 125 laps. And in a stunning development, there were actually green-flag pit stops.
There were 2,147 passes in Saturday night’s race, compared to 991 passes on the race track in the March event at BMS.
Finally, Kevin Harvick passed a race-high 52 cars in March, while J.J. Yeley steered his Chevrolet past 107 cars on Saturday night.