Racing at Bristol Motor Speedway is all about the grind

By foxsports
Published

So we are back to Saturday night racing under the lights at Bristol Motor Speedway. Some of our newer fans may not remember but originally Bristol was asphalt.

Then in 1992 they switched it to a concrete track which, oh by the way, was won by my FOX NASCAR booth buddy Darrell Waltrip. He wore the whole field out that night.

That place was all concrete from the bottom to the top. For years after that we would go there and it was single groove racing right around the bottom.

Needless to say you never dared to go up near the wall. Actually you even had to be pretty brave to try and race even one groove above the bottom.

Back in those days there really was only two ways to pass your competitors. You either did it with strategy on pit road, but more often than not it was to bump the guy ahead of you, get under him and move on.

Then a few years ago Bristol was forced to resurface the track simply because the concrete was deteriorating. It was getting to the point where the concrete was starting to slide off the banking. So knowing they had to resurface it anyway, they put their heads together and tried to create a second groove for racing.

Myself and pretty much everyone else thought the idea of converting it to progressive banking was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out. The only thing it really did was send guys up to the top and run that groove lap after lap.

Then a few years ago they decided to grind the top groove to basically eliminate it. They thought nobody would then dare go up there. What they found out however was once a couple cars would get up there and that top tier got some rubber on it, holy cow, it became the place to run. 

Matt Kenseth said back then it was like driving a slot car simply because the amount of grip that upper groove had.

Personally I've thought we've had some pretty darn good racing at Bristol Motor Speedway, but if you listen to the fans, they seemingly disagree. Now seeing what grinding the top groove did, Bristol has basically now replicated the grinding process on the bottom groove so that it matches the top.

The hope Saturday night is that the grip level of the bottom will now match the top and bring the racing back down to the bottom groove. The good news for the Cup crowd is that Wednesday night there was a NASCAR Camping World Truck race. Then Friday night is the NASCAR XFINITY Series race.

Come Saturday night they will have a pretty good measuring stick of what the bottom and top groove will be like. If the bottom does take on the rubber like they hope from this latest grinding, then not only will they be able to race at the top, but race at the bottom as well.