Jared C. Tilton/Getty
At the start of the season, I was skeptical about how the "Food City Dirt Race" would go, and the race today proved, how talented the drivers, teams, and track personnel at Bristol Motor Speedway are. The race overall was an exciting event to watch and follow throughout the full weekend even though the race was rain delayed a full day. The race played out like a traditional NASCAR Cup Series race typically would just on dirt which is not what I was expecting. I was assuming that bringing in clay, dirt, and sawdust, to a concrete high-banked track would not hold up resulting in major problems for the track even before the cars hit the track. But even with the amount of rain the area had over the weekend the track seemed to hold up until the middle to end of Stage 2 when NASCAR decided to start using single-file restarts due to the dust storm that was being formed. Multiple crashes occurred with multiple cars. Another thing that I noticed over the weekend was that when stock cars wreck on dirt the cars a lot of the time are completely demolished. Early in the race the two drivers who everyone thought would be up front got caught in this same situation. Christoper Bell when running the high lane got sideways and spun right in front of Kyle Larson who had driven from the back and practically ended both of their days. With these two wrecking out, it opened the door for some guys who we don't normally see our front race our front and contend. Daniel Suarez for the newly formed Track house Racing had a career day for himself and his team. Suarez who had little to no dirt experience drove the 99 car to the front and lead for a portion of Stage 2 before being passed by Joey Logano who would eventually go on to take the checkered flag. Other drivers who ran up front were Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Ryan Newman who finished both in the top 5. But Joey Logano was able to weather the storm and capture the first dirt race gladiator sword!
David Crigger/Bristol Herald Courier via AP
NASCAR and Bristol announced that they will do this event again next spring. They did not announce details but assuming they would run the weekend similarly it would be nice to have them run the qualifying races that were planned before the rain. I feel that they would have put on great racing and given the fans more of a need to go to the Saturday event. I also feel that everyone involved did a nice job and did not have a lot of information that they can use to better the event next year. If it works out, and all goes to plan, this event could become a must-see race in the future!
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