Five thoughts after this weekend’s NASCAR races on the dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway…
1. ‘I didn’t even do anything’
Kyle Busch, whose recent high-profile quips include talking about another driver backing into wins and an opinion on how dirt racing takes NASCAR backward, went to victory lane at Bristol’s dirt race by backing into a win on Sunday night.
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It was a chef’s kiss moment for a driver who once stood at the same racetrack after winning the inaugural “Car of Tomorrow” race in 2007 and said the then-new cars “suck.”
Come to think of it, there are many famous Kyle Busch moments at Bristol — his pair of tripleheader weekend sweeps, the “Kyle Busch is an ass!” from Brad Keselowski, the sarcastic “OK” GIF used widely around the internet.
We have to stretch our memory for some of those because Busch hasn’t been as much of a factor at Bristol lately — or anywhere, for that matter. From 2015-19, he averaged 5.4 victories in the Cup Series, won two championships and made five straight Championship 4 appearances; in the two-plus seasons since then, he’s won just four Cup races total (including Sunday).
Now that he’s “retired” from Xfinity Series racing after earning 102 victories there and is winless so far in his limited Truck Series starts this season, it’s been awfully quiet lately for Busch. And for a driver who has publicly expressed lofty goals of career win totals and other such statistics, the recent stretch has been borderline unbearable at times.
To make matters worse, the last few seasons have been accompanied by a rules package he loathed and a new car that stifles creativity. (“They’re bought at Walmart,” as he put it.)
And yet here was Busch on Sunday, winning a race for the 18th straight season. Eighteen years in a row! In all of NASCAR history, only Richard Petty has done that.
Jimmie Johnson made it 16 consecutive before going winless in his final three seasons. Dale Earnhardt Sr. went 15. Jeff Gordon made it 14 in a row before going winless twice in three years.
That level of consistency — being good enough to win at least one race per season over nearly two decades — is mind-boggling considering the ups and downs of NASCAR cycles. No one stays on top forever and all drivers go through periods of downturns.
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Busch managing to win at all — even when his performance isn’t close to his liking — says much about his legacy. But he likely won’t be able to appreciate it much until long after his career is finished, simply because he expects much more out of himself and his team.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do to win more races and be in contention each and every week,” Busch said. “Yes, the 18 (years) is important, but I feel like I’m in the prime of my career and I would love to be running up front and dominating and winning races and contending for championships. That’s our ultimate goal.”
There are still many personal marks within his reach if he can start winning again. Busch now has 60 career Cup Series victories, which is the most among active drivers and ninth on the all-time list. He turns 37 in May, and most drivers can stay competitive into their early 40s.
So how far up the list can he get? His once-dream goal of 100 Cup wins seems highly unlikely (he’d have to improve on his average even from 2015-19), but getting to fourth on the all-time list isn’t far-fetched (Busch needs 25 more wins to occupy that spot).
It will take some time to catch the next driver ahead of him; the 76 by Earnhardt Sr., who Busch channeled as fans booed him after the race. But it’s certainly not out of the question in the next few seasons if Busch can restore some of his lost momentum and begin to be the driver fans viewed as the most talented in NASCAR not long ago.
2. Bristol Dirt
OK, fine. One last thought about the Bristol dirt race — and then can we be done talking about it for awhile, please?
It doesn’t appear Bristol dirt is going anywhere, so here are five suggestions to make it better in the spirit of constructive criticism:
• Make it the All-Star Race along with two concrete points races. The dirt race would have no points, allow the Open to serve as a last-chance qualifier and give NASCAR an additional short track race by restoring one of the paved Bristol races.
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• Take out the windshields. The rain showers actually saved the racing on Sunday night because the track was already on the verge of drying out and getting too dusty at the 1/3 mark of the event. Removing the windshields would allow for proper dirt track prep (wet and muddy) and let the real dirt conditions last longer.
• No mirrors, no spotters. Clint Bowyer raised a great point during the broadcast about true dirt racing, where the drivers go off of feel and sound. If concerned about safety, drivers would still have a “Raceceiver,” which allows officials to radio all drivers at the same time about cautions and hazards. But no mirrors or spotters would make it a real dirt feel.
• Cut the main event in half so the track doesn’t dry out, and have heat races with eliminations that precede the feature race on the same night (with an hour of track prep in between).
• Run a 10-minute hot lap session to allow cars to clean off the track and avoid the mud-caked grilles that caused controversy and a competition caution early in Sunday night’s event (the cars would be permitted to clean the front ends before the actual race began).
3. Rules Are Meant To Be Broken?
It seemed drivers, crew chiefs, viewers at home and even the Fox broadcast were confused by NASCAR’s unique stage break rule that seemed to put Kyle Busch in the lead (even though he wasn’t).
To recap: Busch and others stayed on track at the end of Stage 2 while race leader Chase Briscoe pitted. But because of the special rules just for the Bristol dirt race — which has no live pit stops — Briscoe was still scored as the race leader under the red flag.
With rain threatening to wash out the race at that point, it would have been one of the all-time NASCAR controversies: The driver leading the race on the track, who stayed out for strategy reasons, would have “lost” the race to a driver who pitted and emerged back on track behind the rest.
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Oh, the controversy that would have ensued.
Fortunately, the race got restarted (and Busch won anyway thanks to Briscoe, in sort of a twisted ball-don’t-lie moment). And personally, I don’t have a problem with NASCAR’s scoring because the red flag rules had to be in place for non-competitive pit stops to occur.
But what’s odd is how NASCAR has gone out of its way to try so hard for consistent rules at every other race — except this one. If Bristol dirt can have special rules, why can’t others?
For example: To keep the same format at every race, NASCAR has said it wants to keep stage breaks at road courses instead of letting them go green, which many fans believe would enhance those races. If a dirt race can have its own set of rules, why can’t road courses?
That logic can be applied to others on the circuit as well. Maybe that means different race formats for a track with two races per season (one could have stages and the other could have heats, for example). Maybe that means different restart rules (NASCAR already has decided to implement the choose rule at some tracks and not others).
On Sunday, NASCAR even gave multiple drivers their laps back after the early competition caution for cars overheating. And in last year’s dirt race, NASCAR suddenly decided to use single-file restarts after those hadn’t been used for years.
Those might be sound decisions in the moment, but they also were different from policies in other races. So if that flexibility exists for dirt, applying that approach elsewhere could open up all sorts of interesting options.
4. Nothing is Impossible
When The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi visited North Wilkesboro Speedway in late 2019 to document Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s efforts at preserving the track digitally, he described the facility’s condition as being “something out of a horror movie.”
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The garage roof had collapsed, bleachers were buckling as people walked across them and it generally looked like something from one of those Instagram accounts that shows pictures of abandoned places.
“This is not a track even remotely close to ready to host a race,” Bianchi wrote then. “Nor will it ever be. If anything, the facility is closer to being condemned than anything else. It would require an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to bring North Wilkesboro up to par, and that is simply not realistic.”
“It’s not going to be here one day,” Earnhardt told Bianchi at the time. “It’s going to continue to decay to a point to where it’ll be unrecognizable at some point.”
Neither man had a freezing cold take on North Wilkesboro because they were absolutely right: back then, it had been left for dead. But neither could have foreseen the North Carolina state government allocating $18 million of its American Rescue Plan dollars to the decaying track, which last hosted a NASCAR race in 1996.
Strangely enough, the combination of COVID money and Earnhardt’s quest to preserve the crumbling track on iRacing saved it from eternal rot. How could anyone have anticipated that turn of events?
It will be a welcome and happy occasion when the track hosts racing again this summer — the rare lost track come back to life. Will there really be a Truck Series race there in the future? Can it host something even bigger? At this point, it would be foolish to rule anything out.
One of the key lessons in all this is money can overcome practically any obstacle. The next time someone tells you something can’t be done, what they’re really saying is, “It can’t be done without millions of dollars.” Because as it turned out, all it took for North Wilkesboro to come back from the dead was to get an injection of cash.
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5. Talladega, here we come
After a very entertaining Daytona 500 which ranked among the best in years, there are high hopes for how the Next Gen car will perform in its first test at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend.
Some of the key concerns raised before Daytona have now been answered. Would the cars draft well enough to put on a good race? Yep. Have they seemed safe so far, despite being stiffer? It appears that way. Would the new car leave drivers running single file? Not much.
Talladega often sees more lead changes than narrower Daytona, and February’s Daytona 500 had its most lead changes in five years. There’s certainly reason to believe ‘Dega could produce yet again, especially with qualifying — but no practice sessions — which could shake up the field and put some of the stronger speedway racers toward the back.
Speaking of the great superspeedway drivers, much of the focus for this week should be on Brad Keselowski. After finishing 11th at Bristol, Keselowski climbed to 30th in points for the first time since his team’s severe penalty. That line, of course, puts him within range for a playoff spot should he win a race before the regular season ends.
And guess who led the most laps at the Daytona 500? Keselowski’s 67 laps at the front of the field were 31 more than the next-closest driver (Ryan Blaney). The driver/owner also won the spring race last year at Talladega, where he’s a six-time winner. Blaney, who won back-to-back Talladega races in 2019-20, might be the biggest competition for his former teammate.
Neither driver has won a race this season, but there’s obviously much more urgency for Keselowski to capitalize on one of the few tracks where he should have reliable speed.
(Photo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.
