In The Way: Nothing is more miserable for NASCAR drivers than having a slow car at Bristol
Drivers battle for position during last year's Food City 500 at Bristol. // Archive, NASCAR Illustrated
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Three and a half hours might seem like a long time to spend behind the wheel of a race car. But it can seem twice that long when that car is damaged, ill-handling or just plain slow.
Regardless of the venue, such instances often lead to difficult, frustrating days for even the most successful drivers. When that’s the situation at Bristol Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Food City 500?
“It’s worse here than at any track we’ve ever been to,” says Clint Bowyer, driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 33 Chevrolet. “I mean any track you went to growing up … any track you’ve ever been to. Because you can not get out of the way.”
With lap speeds in excess of 125 mph around the 0.533-mile track, it doesn’t take long for fast cars to catch slower ones. It doesn’t take long for fast cars to catch similarly fast ones, either. And with 43 cars circling the tiny oval, a struggling driver doesn’t try to get out of way as much as he tries to be less in the way.
“You can’t get settled in, you can’t get comfortable,” Bowyer says. “If you’re really loose, you’re trying to just settle in somewhere, find a hole to take a breath and get your composure. But it ain’t going to happen. You better just do it while you’re holding on to the thing and try to maintain. Because the next thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to get turned around and get wrecked.
“It can happen so fast here; everything happens so fast here, you’ve just got to maintain … hold your composure throughout the race. That’s the thing. Things happen. You’ll get into somebody accidentally or they’ll get into you and get you sideways. It’ll ruffle your feathers but you better get calmed down and get settled in or you’re in for a long race.”
Jimmie Johnson makes his 17th career start in the Cup series at Bristol today. While he has three top-five finishes and eight top-10s, it’s one of only six tracks where the Hendrick Motorsports driver has yet to win.
“I think it was with Sterling [Marlin] a couple of years ago,” Johnson says. “We got into it and I hit the wall on about lap 3. The front end was all out of whack, the body knocked in. It was such a long night. It was terrible.
“You almost look around at other wrecks and think, ‘Can I find my way into this one?’ Especially if it’s early in the race when you hit something. Then you have three or four hours of watching the race take place and trying to stay out of the way.”
For most drivers, having a bad day at Bristol isn’t a lot different in that you still need to focus and come away with the best result possible – as bad as that may be.
“You have to understand the situation you’re in and it’s your responsibility to get 100 percent out of it,” says Richard Childress Racing driver Jeff Burton. “On the days that you do have a car that’s not very good, it’s really hard. And this is one of the places that it’s the hardest.
“But this is also one of the places that when you don’t have a good car, you have the advantage of a small track. At Michigan, you can’t do anything about it. People are going by you. At Bristol, you can do some things as a driver to get the most out of your car, to be a nuisance to people to try and make something happen. And that’s really how you have to look at it.”
“You have to quit complaining, worrying about what your car won’t do and kind of pay attention to what it can do. … And you have to also shift your goals. If you come into every race [thinking], ‘I’m going to win the race.’ Well, there are some races where you finish 17th, and you leave here thinking, ‘I drove better than everybody else did here today.’ That’s all you can do.
“You have to go and make more out of less. It turns into a challenge. You can’t get mad about it, you can’t get emotional about it. You just have to pull your boots up and go to work. And that’s how I try to do it.”
But still … Bristol is Bristol. And while making the best of a bad situation sounds good, it’s hard to remember that when your spotter is in your ear warning you about faster cars coming up behind you and you’re trying to keep an eye on those in front of you.
“When it’s good, it’s great,” Tony Stewart, a former winner at BMS, says. “When it’s bad, it’s miserable. If you’re bad, you’re constantly having to get out of somebody’s way, you’re constantly in somebody’s way. With some of the bigger tracks we go to, you’re kind of at the back of the pack but it takes awhile for the leaders to get around [to you].
“Even if your car’s decent, you can be in the way here pretty quick if you’re in the back. It’s feast or famine, but that’s what makes Bristol Bristol. It’s what makes it so exciting.”
