Harvick Rains At Bristol

Kyle Busch's crash effectively ended any competitive challenge to Kevin Harvick at the rain-delayed Volunteer 500

Somehow they got this one in, and once again survival was the fittest approach as Kevin Harvick survived three multicar crashes and outlasted Kyle Busch for his second Cup win of the season. It was a race - and a weekend - with a little bit of everything as the track applied a resin to the bottom of the turns to improve traction and thus open up the bottom for passing, this after years where the leader would ride high and an attacker would dive to the bottom but couldn't stay there and the leader would clear him by the stripe.

The oddity of the weekend was that the resin first showed itself effective Wednesday night in the UNOH Truck 200, a race where unheralded Ben Kennedy stormed to a surprise victory, yet by Friday when the Food City 300 Xfinity series race hit the concrete the resin was worn out and the race became a spirited fight where the low groove wasn't effective.

The battle for the lead, especially Friday night, turned into a spirited affair

The lack of a low groove made for spirited competition up front and also led to one of the most surprising wrecks of the season

JGR wound up empty-handed as far as winning at Bristol went, as in all three races their ace Toyotas wrecked, and the result was a rarity - a sweep for Chevrolet, a marque that has just six wins to eleven so far for Toyota and six for Ford. The three-race sweep came on the heels of the signing by Hendrick Motorsports of Kyle Busch Toyota Truck ace William Byron, the first good news for Chevy pretty much all season. The signing raises question about the longer-term viability of the ineffective Kasey Kahne (a respectable 13th at Bristol, his best finished since 14th at Kentucky) and also potentially about Dale Earnhardt Jr., who appears not to have a timetable for returning to the cockpit.

Byron is the latest young gun on the track toward Cup, and his eventual graduation to Cup comes amid some downright schizophrenic performances by NASCAR's touted youngsters. Kyle Larson's weekend saw him lead 200 laps on Friday night yet still not win, and the more one watches him the more he seems to find ways to lose and not be able to figure out how to win.

It makes the second for Ricky Stenhouse all the more eye-opening.  Little better than a nothing driver his whole career, Stenhouse somehow pulled off a spectacular effort enough to finish runner-up; it was a surprisingly good day for the moribund Roush effort after Trevor Bayne salvaged 12th while Greg Biffle - the definition of moribund the last four races - had another forgettable weekend. 

The most striking contrast lay with Austin Dillon, who posted his tenth top-10 finish after winding up winning the Xfinity 300 Friday night.   His ten top-10s top the combined total of his RCR teammates (nine), and one of them, Paul Menard, has become the subject of Rumor Control Central with scuttlebutt that he will go to Penske's outfit. 

Ten top-10s in Cup look more and more impressive compared to much-heralded Darrell Wallace Jr. in the Xfinity series; his top-tens there (with another at this Bristol race) show there's ability but the lack of wins there - and really little in the way of sustained fight since leaving Kyle Busch's Truck team where he won five times - leaves one wondering if he has that killer instinct. 

It all added up to a prolonged weekend that left some legitimate surprises.   One hopes Michigan can recover its old competitive vinegar next week and the sport can see even more surprises.

Joe Gibbs Racing's Bristol Stomp

Joe Gibbs Racing lit it up in Bristol's first NASCAR weekend and the win by Carl Edwards on Sunday following the surprise win by Erik Jones on Saturday further cements JGR's hold on the NASCAR world circa 2016.   The April weekend at Bristol was the second short track race of the season and it saw enough eye-popping competition to warrant lengthy analysis.

Worth discussing right away is the odd dichotomy of the racing and the crowds for the Bristol track.  Once advertised as the hardest ticket in racing, Bristol races stopped selling out several years ago and this April weekend the stands were striking in the sparseness of the crowds, even for the Southeastern 500 on Sunday.   The loss of NASCAR luster has been a manifest truth for some years now and Bristol's decline in popularity has been all the more striking. 

The quality of the racing there from 2010 onward has been a heated controversy in at least some fan and participant circles.   Steve Billmyer, a longtime crewman who crewed for Harry Hyde's team in the 1980s, calls Bristol "a shell of its former self" because the racing in recent years has seen little to no grip on the bottom; "grinding down the high groove turned it into a one-groove track," he adds.   And he isn't the only one from which such sentiment I've heard or read expressed.

I find the controversy somewhat odd because I remember Bristol's competitive heyday of the 1989 through 1991 seasons, as the Southeastern 500 for those three straight runnings combined to break 80 official lead changes and saw two dramatic finishes, none closer than Davey Allison's photo-finish win over Mark Martin amid the wreck of Sterling Marlin by Ricky Rudd just behind them.   Rusty Wallace's 1989 victory came after a spectacular darkhorse victory bid by Greg Sacks, while Rusty's 1991 victory after making up two-lap deficits on two different occasions was easily the most competitive short track race in NASCAR history.    The racing involved the highside being faster than the lowside as a race would go on and the lead would often change twice a lap due to an attacking car getting a nose ahead but being beaten to the stripe by the highside car.  The high vs. low dichotomy was bitterly noted by Geoff Bodine after crashing out of the 1990 Southeastern 500 ("The bottom groove is gone, where we normally run.....we're racing under some ridiculous conditions").

The track was asphalt then and constant application of sealer, controversy over lack of grip and so forth led following Alan Kulwicki's 1992 Southeastern 500 victory to the use of concrete as a surface.   The conversion to concrete, combined with the full phase-in of radial tires, changed Bristol racing.   Now the track became a one-groove bullring where the bottom groove was the only area to race on.   Though the record indicates the conversion to concrete didn't drastically change incidence of yellows for Bristol races (for instance the track hit twenty yellows in 1989 as asphalt, then did it again in 1997 and 2003) the change nonetheless did affect how drivers could race.   For nearly two decades Bristol became a "bump and run" racetrack, illustrated in graphic fashion in the last-lap melee involving Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte in the 1999 Volunteer 500, as well as with several helmet-throwing incidents, notably Ward Burton in 2002 and Dale Jarrett in 1993. 

This type of racing became a selling point for races there.   "I miss the old bump-and-run days," says Lorenzo Haskins, "I miss the days of over a dozen cautions."   

But with almost every race wrecking so many cars and so little passing there seemed need for change, and by 2010 the turns had been changed to a more progressive form of banking, the lower groove flatter than the higher groove.  The 2010 Southeastern 500 won by Jimmie Johnson may have been the first race to truly illustrate the effect of the change.  It has been really a return of Bristol's pre-concrete competitive self; the lead changed 29 times in that 2010 race, by far the most since 1991.   Bristol has broken 20 lead changes four times from there through this April weekend.

The best illustration of the "back to the future" Bristol came in Saturday's Fitzgerald 300 Xfinity race; the most eye-popping non-Daytona/Talladega race since the immortal 2015 Charlotte Truck 200 and its Erik Jones-Kasey Kahne sidedraft battle for the win - with Jones' involvement in both the ultimate irony.   Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson had the race almost all to themselves, and clumps of lapped cars turned their duel into a real battle as the lead changed back and forth between them.  

Throughout the low line was all but unraceable, and this wound up becoming decisive on the final restart, as Kyle Busch gagged horribly, Larson jumped to the lead, but Erik Jones slithered up high and stole the race, Larson doomed with zero grip to use down low.


*****


The Food City 500 had a tough act to follow and it didn't really reach that level of competition, simply because Saturday's race caught a lot of people by surprise.   Sunday nonetheless saw some spirited battling up front and fifteen yellows.   Takeaways from the Sunday affair -


It's strictly JGR vs. Hendrick in 2016 -JGR has now won four times to go against two Hendrick wins.   True, we saw another spirited effort by Stewart-Haas, itself with a win so far, but that was pretty much it as far as any challenge for the win went.

The rookie race looks over - Chase Elliott quietly clawed to a fourth-place finish and suddenly Ryan Blaney looks like a rookie in a Penske satellite car more than a victory contender, though 11th was hardly a bad finish here.

Roush-Fenway showed noticeable improvement - All three Roush cars finished in the top sixteen; coming after some decent efforts so far it's not implausible right now to think some level of a turnaround is happening.

Some independents grab quality runs - Matt DiBenedetto and the BK Racing #83 shocked everyone with a spectacular sixth place coming after a strong effort by Landon Cassill, who led twenty laps in the Bob Jenkins Ford. And while Clint Bowyer is no darkhorse, the Harry Scott car is no powerhouse, so 8th for that combo warrants mention as well.

Not all touchdowns for Coach Gibbs - Matt Kenseth led 142 laps then wrecked out, and Kyle Busch also wrecked out. Such radical swings in fortune are par for the course for Busch, but Kenseth's poor season has been a head-scratcher.

Some more tire issues - The JGR teams were the highest profile of several cars that had right-front failures, and for the second time this year Goodyear addressed the issue during the racecast.


So it went at Bristol, with Richmond up next.

The Surprising Rise Of Joey Logano

In the 2009 Toyota All-Star Showdown Joey Logano, a development driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, took out the leader of the race, and the sheer absurdity of his racing seemed to indicate he was going to be another of those drivers who would go nowhere in his career.

Six years later, the resurgence of Joey Logano has become one of the budding epics of NASCAR.


It certainly didn't start that way.   The Middletown, CT native's family moved to Georgia when he was a youth and he became an ace in Bandolero cars and Legends cars, to where by the age of fifteen he was plugged as "the real deal" by NASCAR star Mark Martin.   He was called "the greatest thing since sliced bread" by Randy LaJoie, the two-time Busch series champ.

When he won at Kentucky at eighteen, it appeared the sliced bread moniker would stick.   He won in ARCA racing in the 2008 Carolina 500 and by the end of that year was driving for JGR in Winston Cup, being groomed as successor to Tony Stewart.   He drove several late-season races for JGR, but it was here that the first hint of struggle showed with dismal efforts, which wound up carrying over into his first full season, 2009.   He finished no better than 30th in his first three races and despite winning the rain-shortened New England 300 and Rookie of the Year, his efforts in a barren rookie field were uninspiring.

The remainder of his career with Joe Gibbs was likewise forgettable, lowlighted by a petulant pit confrontation and generally subpar efforts - he was doing less with more, and though he pulled off a surprisingly strong win at Pocono in 2012, by then it was basically too late.   Gibbs gave up on Logano and signed ex-Roush ace Matt Kenseth for his #20.

Logano was signed by Penske Racing, reportedly at the behest of the team's top driver Brad Keselowski.   Logano's Penske career began with a controversial bang in two ugly set-tos with former JGR teammate Denny Hamlin, one at Bristol and a far more severe confrontation at Fontana where Hamlin got stormed into an inside wall and was seriously injured; it led to a postrace fracas between Logano and Tony Stewart (the result of an earlier on-track showdown that day).

And yet in spite of all that the season turned into the best of his career with a win at the Yankee 400 at Michigan and an 8th in final points.   And the career rebound was just starting,  for in 2014 Logano erupted to five wins, a career-high 993 laps led, and fourth in points.   And along the way he usurped teammate Brad Keselowski, the 2012 series champ, as top dog at Penske Racing.

No one could have seen any of that coming after his pathetic beginning at the Cup level with Gibbs anymore than they could have seen him shooting down the Hendrick juggernaut to win in one of the wildest Daytona 500 finishes ever.   Sliced bread?   Joey Logano is the full loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right now.

Dance Between The Raindrops At Bristol

So for the second time in four weeks NASCAR sees an unplanned primetime race, this one at Bristol.  NASCAR has been dancing between the raindrops a little too much so far in 2014 and this Southeastern 500 wound up with several angles worthy of comment -


Did anyone show up for this race? - Yes, it was rainy weather all day, yet the crowd was disturbingly small for Bristol.   Normally I don't feel bad for Bruton Smith; here I have to because it is never good for the sport when the crowd is that small.


Cue The Rookies - For pretty much the first time this season Kyle Larson and - more quietly - Austin Dillon showcased some legitimate racing moxie.  


Mister Danica Patrick - Ricky Stenhouse clawed his way to finish second and had a spirited running battle to get that spot.   His girlfriend finished a respectable 18th as well.


Start believing in The King again - It will take a lot more runs like this to believe in Aric Almirola, but finishing third, and showing some fight to get there, is an encouraging sign for Richard Petty's #43.


 Carl Edwards remains an enigma - He's won 22 races, yet it remains strange seeing him win, because his consistency has been so erratic - winless in 2009 and 2012, six wins since 2008's nine-win explosion. 


Brian Vickers keeps on keeping on - He started at the back and finished ninth - that's the best a Michael Waltrip car has looked so far this season.


The Busches get racetrack indigestion - The Busch brothers had a bad ending, as they combined to lead 101 laps yet neither cracked the top-28 at the end.


A rookie makes a rookie mistake - Timmy Hill's rear-end job on Matt Kenseth will make the season blooper reel for rookie mistakes.


The old Bristol is finally back - For about the first eighteen seasons since it was repaved as concrete instead of asphalt Bristol had been the worst track on the tour because it was one groove.   In 2010 with banking changes two grooves suddenly appeared, and despite more recent changes to get it back to the slam-fest it had been, the ability to pass has not been harmed.   While passing on the low groove is excessively hard, it's doable, and has led to some nifty battles - and a return of some of the old Bristol vinegar.


It can be lonely at the top - I'm fairly confident tears other than of the crocodile variety were not shed with Jimmie Johnson's mediocre finish.  


So that's that, and the series now ventures west to Fontana, and the second test of the new racecar package that got its first live fire test at Vegas; one hopes raceability shows improvement there.

The Wreck It Ralph 500 Part II

The 2013 Southeastern 500 was an anticipated race given Bristol's history of crashes and also of driver/crew spats. And the Winston Cup Series will be talking about this one for awhile, but as has been seen before the discussion will be for reasons both good and bad. Start with the good of the weekend - the racing at Bristol after the track's change to the turns before last August's Volunteer 500 turned out to be interesting. The Nationwide 300-miler on Saturday saw several dices up front and a surprising finish as rookie Kyle Larson used lapped traffic and nearly got Kyle Busch at the line. The 500 turned out to be similar, though passing up front was noticeably harder and the leaders got strung out more. If anything the comparison shows anew justification for NASCAR to switch to smaller tapered engine spacers for the Cup cars, as the N'wide cars with 200 less HP saw some better racing. Regardless, Bristol has finally proven itself as a good racetrack, reverting to the form it had shown in its final four seasons before it was converted to concrete.

Another positive from the race was the stellar finish of Kurt Busch and the underfunded Furniture Row team, hustling to fourth place.   One should add also a respectable 13th for AJ Allmendinger.  


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In the bad section, the crashes that are always a part of Bristol racing were out in force again, and this time there was also a tire issue - this following Phoenix's tire problems - with multiple blowouts and several hard crashes, notably the crash that wiped out race leaders Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth.   Goodyear stated there were issues of melting sealing beads caused by brake heat - which is another bad sign for this Generation Six car, which is noticeably faster and is handling poorly, which tends to lead to more braking.   It's also worth noting a crew chief who offered an alternate take on the race's tire issues.
Then there is Joey Logano, punted hard by Denny Hamlin on a restart, this following a set-to at Daytona.   If you remember his bad wreck at Irwindale in 2009 where he plowed sideways into the field, you saw right away a driver long on hype and short on talent as well as short on accountability and that this combination would mean a subpar at best Cup career.   It's now becoming more obvious how in over his head he is in Winston Cup and one can also suspect what kind of negative dynamic went into his stay at Joe Gibbs Racing given the nastiness between him and ex-teammate Denny Hamlin - though it's no endorsement of Hamlin, either, who has been described in ATHLON SPORTS as having the worst personality in the garage area.  

Speaking of negative dynamics, Stewart Haas Racing isn't exactly cleaning up, either, and given the presence of a certain Cup rookie on their roster, one need remember how two powerhouse Indycar teams - Rahal Letterman and Andretti Racing - suffered in the 2005-12 period during that rookie's tenure.

The lackluster crowd at the track has led to criticism of the track's mid-March date as opposed to the early-April date of the past, but this is a laughable criticism - March Bristol races have been fairly common in its history.

So the Southeastern 500 goes into the books and the 2013 begins building steam.

The Wreck It Ralph 500

The 2013 Winston Cup season plods along and enters Bristol, TN for the first of NASCAR's two annual Cup weekends at Bristol International Raceway - I know, the official name is Bristol Motor Speedway, and that doesn't matter - and NASCAR's Generation Six racecar debuts at the high banked bowl. This is the second weekend since Bristol's progressive banking was ground down to try and increase "action" - aka the crashes - and the last time out the racing produced another epidemic of crashes (13 yellows totalling 87 laps) and a helmet-throw by Tony Stewart on Matt Kenseth, yet curiously produced racing where cars still ran the high groove (notably Kasey Kahne).

The race is the fourth for the Gen-6 car after NASCAR made a point of saying that the Vegas 400 saw 31 lead changes official and otherwise. While that number is certainly a step up from Phoenix, it's just a start as far as vindicating NASCAR's efforts go. And Bristol really isn't a great venue to test how racy the Gen-6 really is because of all the crashes the joint usually produces.

 Indeed, the one word to describe Bristol is Overrated. Debuting in 1961, Bristol saw some good racing in its first decade, notably the 1968 Southeastern 500 as several hard battles erupted for the lead between Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Leeroy Yarbrough, and Richard Petty. In 1969 the track was banked from 18 degrees to 36 for greater speeds; crashes escalated, then became less numerous (even seeing 1971's caution-free Volunteer 500) before wavering up and down over the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. The crashes escalated in a big way in the late 1980s with four consecutive Southeastern 500s (1988-91) erupting to 64 cautions; the upshot of it all was that the racing was also the best the track had ever seen - there were an eye-popping 34 official lead changes in 1989 before a bizarre one-race pitstop and restart rule that doubled up the field produced a still-standing-short-track-record 41 lead changes in 1991. In between, 1990's Southeastern 500 saw numerous battles for the lead and a wild four-car finish.

Struggle to keep the asphalt surface in raceable shape led in 1992 to paving of the track with concrete; suddenly passing became absurdly difficult and the crashes, like the hits, just kept on coming - so much so that the track redid the corners in 2007 with progressive banking before switching back in 2012. The irony is the progressive banking actually made Bristol a competitive race, with memorable side by side battles for the lead in 2010 and 2012 and a noticeable reduction in yellows. 1

The track is hyped as producing the best racing, yet though it's certainly had some good races over the years it really isn't that much. It's the highest banking in the sport yet the actual racing generally has left something to be desired. It's also not the best test bed for the Gen-6 racecar given its small size and lack of racing room. NASCAR's sensitivity to the Gen-6's struggles explains their hype of Vegas' 31 lead changes. Certainly we all want the sport to be more competitive, and 31 lead changes is a start - if we start seeing races other than the plate races where 50 lead changes is broken, that will be the truest sign the project is working. For now, though, I'm expecting at least thirteen crashes at Bristol; I'll be surprised if there is as much passing as a Winston Cup race ought to have.  

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1 - Racing Reference Bristol Raceway page