Bristol Motor Speedway has been really up and down in recent years.
Short track racing in general has been tough for the Next Gen car, but Bristol has been the worst. NASCAR Cup Series races there have either been uncompetitive or so completely overrun with tire failures that they become a black eye for the sport.
NASCAR and Goodyear wanted to find something in between those two for this weekend. Weather in the 80s on Sunday (April 12) didn’t necessarily bode well for the racing product, since that would mean that rubber would take to the high banks.
Interestingly, NASCAR’s Loop Data indicates that even the passing in last year’s race was actually in line with previous spring races at Bristol. You just had a tie for the lowest number of lead changes since the track was converted to concrete.
This year’s race had a little more passing than last year, but 32 fewer laps under green. As a result, the number of passes under green increased from 4.8 to 5.2 per lap. This is less than half the passes per lap that the night race last September, but people weren’t blowing tires in 40 laps.
During NASCAR RaceDay prior to the race, part of the discussion was centered around the tires. I’ll admit that I wasn’t really concerned about it once I saw the weather forecast on Thursday. I was wondering where they got the track temperatures from though.
As you know, concrete does not heat up as quickly as asphalt does (although it does heat up). The broadcast noted a track temperature of 125°. It was plenty warm on Sunday, but I wasn’t sure if that was the concrete or asphalt temperature.
When the race was on Sunday, I really did want to see what the tires looked like. Regan Smith showed viewers the tires off Christopher Bell’s car from the opening 61-lap run. They looked really good, even the left side tires with the PJ1 TrackBite in play. What I really would have liked to have seen were the tires off Chase Elliott‘s or Josh Berry’s car, drivers who went the entirety of stage one before their first pit stops.
Ultimately, you ended up with a race that was more competitive than last year’s spring race, but not necessarily to everyone’s cup of tea. It can’t be perfect, but what are you going to do? A lot of people still clamor for the old Bristol of the 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s. However, the new Bristol has been around longer than the old one ever was at this point. Perhaps there’s a group of fans who want chaos. You got a lot of that back then.
Outside of the tires, the big story of the week was Alex Bowman’s return to the seat after missing four races due to the effects of vertigo that he experienced at Circuit of the Americas. Prior to the race, he sat down with Jamie Little.
As you’d expect, the piece was largely about Bowman’s health. He described what he was feeling back in March, effectively nauseous. The team let him make the call to get out, and he did.
Since then, he has spent a significant amount of time trying to get cleared to get back in the car. A lot of time was spent at the new Ten Tenths Motor Club right near Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Admittedly, I wanted to learn a little more about the recertification process to get back into the car. You hear a little information here and there about it, but it’s definitely not necessarily a one-to-one setup due to the current testing rules.
The racing itself was decent at times. As noted above, it can be difficult to ascertain what is considered a good race at Bristol since fans have many different opinions of what constitutes one (multiple grooves vs. one groove at the bottom vs. one groove at the top). What we got was better than having one groove at the top for sure. However, the racing product for Cup at Bristol has been something of a work in progress ever since the reconfiguration in 2007.
FOX Sports 1 struggled early on with racing for position. There was likely a decent amount of it, but we didn’t seem to get much. Luckily, that got better as the race went on.
Coverage of incidents can be a mixed bag. Sunday was one of those races where you had bad luck regarding multiple incidents occurring during commercial breaks. With full-time side-by-side commercial breaks under green these days, it’s better than it once was, but you still lose context.
There were a couple of issues with how replays were presented. For instance, Bell ran well early on, then got busted for speeding in the pits. Early in stage two, he hit the wall exiting turn 4. This likely broke a toe link, although the coverage never definitively proved that.
He ultimately spun out in turn 2 to bring out the race’s third caution. We saw the wall contact in replay, then nothing. It appeared that the decision was made to go to a commercial break after that. Note that the wall contact didn’t bring out the yellow.
A replay of the actual reason for the caution didn’t come for another two to three minutes. That’s not a good strategy. The broadcast would do well not to repeat that.
Post-race coverage was pretty typical. Even with 32 more caution laps, the race ended within the scheduled timeslot. Viewers got interviews with the top-six finishers and a check of the points before FS1 left Bristol for rainy (again) Pomona.
Ty Gibbs’ victory was described as a feel-good story given everything that he’s gone through in the past few years. What was a little surprising was that everything surrounding his father and uncle wasn’t rehashed. Also of note, the ongoing Chris Gabehart lawsuit wasn’t broached here.
Why is that important? In the court documents, Gabehart alleged that Gibbs was basically being given special treatment. He didn’t necessarily have to attend all the meetings that the other drivers did.
That said, Gibbs has been significantly better this year as a driver. The win Sunday was the No. 54 team’s first win in four years (the last one was the Food City Dirt Race at Bristol with Kyle Busch driving the No. 18 Toyota).
Overall, FOX Sports struggled early on to make this race seem exciting to viewers. Yes, Ross Chastain charged from sixth to first on the first lap, but you just didn’t see a lot of action early on. It was there, but we didn’t see it. The second half of the race seemingly had a lot more action for TV viewers, but it probably was about the same to anyone who was there.
There’s also the elephant in the room regarding attendance. It didn’t look all that swell on Sunday. This never came up on the broadcast, but it didn’t really look great. I’ve seen estimates of around 70,000 people in attendance on Sunday. Perhaps the low number of fans on-site may have contributed to some of the production choices.
That’s all for this week. Next weekend will be quite busy. Kansas Speedway will host a tripleheader weekend with the NASCAR Cup, O’Reilly Auto Parts and ARCA Menards Series. Meanwhile, the NTT IndyCar Series and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will be in Long Beach. Finally, the FIA World Endurance Championship will make its delayed 2026 debut at Imola. TV listings can be seen here.
In next week’s edition of Couch Potato Tuesday here at Frontstretch, we’ll cover the AdventHealth 400, which will see the return of the Cup Series to FOX. The Critic’s Annex will cover Saturday night’s Suburban Propane 300 broadcast, which saw some personnel changes.
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Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the site's FREE e-mail newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the site's Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
TV ratings should be higher when you consider the weak attendance at the tracks.
Xfinity race at Bristol last weekend was more than just embarrassing.
Agree with last 2 posts… bring back the old track/ days, the carnage was part of the show, and drew eyes to the tv.
The homogenized stuff we see now has no excitement, despite the contrived attempt with the stupid stages.
The Gibbs kid was going to win, get it over with and now we can go on… and confirmation on his Chosen one / special treatment status confirmed by legal docs was so spot on ironic. Yes… not a peep about the lack of a crowd, nor anything controversial… Fox not doing it’s journalistic duty . Probably influenced by NA$CAR big wigs.
My 2 biggest gripes about the coverage are 1.) the broadcast is always way too slow showing incidents live. I mean, I heard one of the broadcasters say there was a crash in turn 2 and it was a good 5-10 seconds before the camera caught it live. Why does it take so long? If they are having that much trouble finding incidents live, maybe they need to get rid of the other gimmick cams (bumper, in car, roof).
And 2) is when a caution comes out for incident, the coverage of the incident is based on who is involved. For example, one of the chose ones spun and it was covered ad nauseum. But when one of the back markers spun, it was barely covered almost to the point of being ignored. So Nascar threw the yellow, but we never really saw why.
Yeah, while I felt Fox did a little better job covering something other than the top five action, I also wondered why it took so long to get a camera on some accidents. On a huge track like Talladega or one of the road courses, I can understand this if it’s happening away from the remainder of the action. But Bristol is small enough nearly every camera should be on the action within a second or two.
They were cracking me up with how much time they spent on the gyro-cam. One lap was plenty. After that, I was thinking “can we please get back to the race?”
Thanks as always, Phil. Your ability to distill hours of coverage into a single article is always impressive.
I 100% fall into the group pining for days gone by at Bristol. Bristol became a must see event as a bottom groove only track. The aggression and yes, carnage, came about organically. It was once referred to as racing in a blender, and I cannot think of a better way to describe the high speed chaos we were once treated to. It was must see racing, whether in person, or on TV. The waiting list for tickets was immense, on a par with the hardest tickets to acquire in all of sports.
I recognize I could be accused of hypocrisy, as I generally detest the contrived carnage stage racing brings at all tracks, and the elimination of strategy which comes along with the stages. But Bristol at its best didn’t need contrived madness. The madness was baked into the track’s configuration, and it was a joy to behold. Sure, there were races where Darrell Waltrip lapped the field, and not much happened. Still, rare was the Bristol race which was anything other than exciting and entertaining.
I found the broadcast’s attempt to make the Gibbs win a feel good story to be a little tone deaf. I completely understand why they did it, why they felt they had to do it, but the fact remains it was an unpopular win overall, and the coverage gushing about it came off as saccharine, to be generous. I would have preferred they note why the family was ecstatic, why a few fans would be happy, yet note why so many weren’t pleased with the outcome.
Agree. In general I have no interest in seeing wreckfest, demolition races, but before the reconfiguration I was OK with twice a year watching the mayhem.
I thought Sunday’s race was decent from the new norm that is modern day Bristol but it wasn’t anything special. And there were a shit ton of empty seats around the track from what I saw.
Even though I have no love for little Gibbs, I am always OK with seeing someone win their first race. I don’t care if he ever wins another.