NASCAR on Bristol Dirt on Easter Sunday?
NASCAR had its second race on dirt since 1989 at Bristol Motor Speedway on Easter Sunday. Which broke an age-old rule of keeping Easter Sunday and Mother’s day as open events. The format of how the race was run was different than if they were racing at tracks like Daytona; or, Talladega. In a very rare occurrence, there were non-competitive pit-stops. Which to a lot of people didnt make sense. But it's pretty simple; It meant that if you pitted, after a caution flag, you would get the position that you were in back when you returned to the track. And at the beginning of the race, NASCAR pulled every car off the track (almost like putting a temporary red flag but it was a caution) to clean the mud off the grills of the cars which helped considerably!
The Final Laps at Bristol in the video below:
Shoutout to @cbell20rheen on TikTok for sharing the video - original video credits go to FOX
Final moments of the race
During the final laps of the 250-lap race, Chase Briscoe (14) and Tyler Reddick (8), battled it out for the lead; but with Kyle Busch in 3rd and in Briscoe and Reddick’s mirrors, so they thought, they continued to battle it out. On the final turn, Briscoe attempted to do a slide-job on Reddick, which resulted in both Briscoe and Reddick spinning out. Reddick recovered from the spin then Kyle Busch swooped in from behind to capture the checkered flag.
TV Ratings and views
According to racer.com, The Bristol race on Sunday averaged 0.65/1.167m on FS1 — healthy advances on its 0.42/719,000 and 0.51/841,000 from COTA and Atlanta on the same cable network. In addition to the ratings, Fox earned 4.007 million viewers for Sunday night's race, making it the most-watched NASCAR event of any kind at Bristol Motor Speedway since spring '16.
Should NASCAR Race on dirt somewhere else?
It's already been announced that dirt returns to Bristol in 2023, but should NASCAR go on dirt somewhere else like Charlotte; what about Las Vegas? There are so many different options that NASCAR can consider. In Charlotte, Alex Andrejev wrote to NASCAR and said that they should, “try another Cup race on dirt, but leave Bristol’s concrete alone," as there are "realistic considerations for NASCAR’s Cup Series racing at a purpose-built dirt oval, such as the smaller seating capacity." Andrejev also made note of the "spirit of innovation and short track spectacle of it" She says it reminded her of the Clash at the Coliseum in February and "why not lean into that and make an exhibition or All-Star dirt race at a venue" like Eldora Speedway in Ohio?”
NASCAR should consider more options for racing on dirt in any of the current running series (I.e: Cup series, Xfinity, Trucks, ARCA, etc). But will they?
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