WEEK SIX – BRISTOL STOMPING
The most popular track in NASCAR is the
half-mile bowl in Tennessee known as Bristol. This season marks the 30th
anniversary of the track’s debut in what was then known as the NASCAR Grand
National series. Jack Smith was the first winner on a track where the banking
was at some 18 degrees. In the summer of 1969 Larry Carrier decided to speed up
his events by banking the track to 36 degrees; the first event with such banking
wiped out some 3/4 of the field and led Richard Petty to growl, "They
ruined a pretty good racetrack. There’s no room for the speeds we’re
running."
The track also saw the return to
competitive glory of the Chevrolet brand in 1971. The Bowties had not won
anywhere in several years before Richard Howard commissioned Junior Johnson to
build a Chevy to boost crowds at his Charlotte Motor Speedway; Howard and
Johnson hired Charlie Glotzbach to drive the ’71 Monte Carlo and campaigned the
car at Charlotte and other tracks they could run. At Bristol Glotzbach got
relief help from Raymond "Friday" Hassler and the #3 Monte Carlo took
the win in a caution-free event.
Bobby Allison then swept both Bristols in
the Howard-Johnson Monte Carlo in 1972, and Johnson’s domination of Thunder
Valley proceeded; Cale Yarborough took over the car in 1973 and led wire to wire
in March 1973. He did much the same in March 1974, and in July Buddy Baker got
the lead in the final 20 laps, but on the final lap Cale plowed under Baker, the
two smeared together through Three and Fout, and Cale cleared him by four
lengths at the stripe.
Gary Baker acquired control in the later
1970s and Bristol’s second race, now run in late August, was run on Saturday
night, a tradition that has become a season highlight.
In March 1979 rookie Dale Earnhardt seized
the win, his first in his 16th start. He won the spring race again in 1980 on
his way to the title.
In the early 1980s Warner Hodgedon
acquired control, but by 1985 he was gone from the sport and Carrier now had his
racetrack. In 1985 Dale Earnhardt lost his power steering but wrestled the
Richard Childress #3 to victory.
Rusty Wallace nabbed his first career win
in 1986, and has become one of the track’s historic dominators. He survived some
20 cautions in April 1989 and even more cautions in April 1991; that particular
race saw 41 lead changes, by far a record for NASCAR short tracks. His dominant
win in April 1993 was dedicated to Alan Kulwicki, a two-time winner whose April
1992 win was a key to the 1992 title, and who was killed in an airplane crash on
his way to the track only days earlier.
Earnhardt returned to victory in 1994,
then in August 1999 he and Terry Labonte clashed in the final two laps and Terry
was wrecked off Turn Two in the most controversial finish of the 1990s.
Jeff Gordon went on a mid-90s tear with
four straight spring wins, but in 2000 Rusty Wallace brought out the broom to
bring his win total at Thunder Valley to nine.
Crashes are a way of life at Bristol – and
Rusty Wallace no doubt remembers his August 1988 tumble where Dr. Jerry Punch
rushed out, found that his airway was blocked, and administered help that kept
Rusty from suffocating. Rusty acknowledged without hesitation that Punch’s
action saved his life.
There is also Michael Waltrip on March 31,
1990. After banging wheels with another car, he hit the cross-over gate in Turn
Two; the gate opened and he slammed full-speed into the now-exposed concrete
wall abutment. The car imploded in place and slid slowly to the apron. Literally
everyone was certain Michael was dead; that night he asked car owner Chuck Rider
if the car could be fixed; "I didn’t hit nothing in the back," he
said.
Wild finishes are also in the track’s
history. The July 1974 Cale-Baker bash was one; another involved Bill Elliott
and Geoff Bodine in 1988; Elliott was spun out by Bodine with about 15 to go,
but he rallied to power-slide past Bodine for the win, only his first on a short
track. The August 1999 bash remains the track’s most famous.
That it was at Bristol that Dale Earnhardt
nabbed his debut win, in 1979, no doubt added poignancy to the weekend amid the
continuing specter that his death has been over the sport. Earnhardt’s pal Rusty
Wallace got his debut win at Bristol in 1986 and was the heavy favorite entering
the race.
So Bristol’s first-timers reputation got
brighter this time around with the stellar Elliott Sadler triumph. The fourth
first-time winner in the last seven races, Sadler’s win gave the Wood Brothers
their first ever triumph at Bristol, and the win brought back memories of the
1970s as hounding the #21 down to the finish was the #43 Petty Dodge of John
Andretti.
Sadler was "the other rookie" of
1999, taking a distant back seat to Tony Stewart’s spectacular debut season. By
most rookie standards, Elliott’s effort was commendable. The Wood Brothers,
however, were a team drowned out by the multi-car mega-efforts the sport had
allowed to get out of control, and by the end of 2000 the proud Stuart, VA
effort had become little more than a satrapy of the Jack Roush empire – the
team’s cars, engines, and so forth are handled by Roush Racing, a frustrating
fall from the days when teams would get engines built by Tommy Turner in the
Woods’ modest-looking garage, engines that powered to win after win.
Thus, the team likely needs to begin
preparations to reopen their own engine and fab shops, for the drawbacks to
relying on outside suppliers for cars and engines are serious, especially given
the collapse of the Roush empire’s primary racing efforts. A Roush satrapy
beating the boss’ primary outfits doesn’t make the in-house teams look good,
especially when those primary outfits almost to a man have consistently missed
the setup week after week, and "the drain of supplying the outsiders while
the insiders are struggling" is what led Rick Hendrick to cut off his
engine supply to Bob Whitcomb and Derrike Cope after 1990 and to Joe Gibbs
Racing after 1995. Whitcomb’s outfit did not survive the loss of this outside
supply; JGR fortunately did.
The sport is now seeing a blood feud in
Tony Stewart versus Jeff Gordon. The arrival of Stewart foretold a rivalry, and
it got started at Watkins Glen in 2000 and reached its first big explosion at
Bristol.
Many claim Stewart cut down on Gordon.
Overlooked is the reason why – Stewart had the corner. Gordon could only get up
to Stewart’s rear quarter panel, hardly decent position to pull off a pass.
Gordon has built up a reputation for passing people at risky low angles – after
a Gordon swerve at New Hampshire in 1999, Rusty Wallace sourly commented on
Gordon’s love affair with passing on the apron. That love affair showed again at
Bristol.
Stewart’s retaliation was certainly the
height of foolishness and justly resulted in a major penalty. Yet there is a
sense in which Gordon deserved it.
On the Ernie Irvan controversy of 1991,
Wallace noted, "I told him the other day, ‘We’ll race each other, you hit
me, I’m gonna crash you.’ And I’ve never had a problem with Irvan." Such
words apply to the Stewart-Gordon feud – one or the other will learn the lesson.
The turnaround of the last four races has
been John Andretti’s Petty Enterprises outfit. A strong run at Vegas was
eliminated in a crash with Joe Nemechek; another good effort the next week at
Atlanta netted fourteenth, hardly spectacular but a finish that established
something of a baseline from which to improve. Improvement came in spades the
next week at Darlington, and PE’s traditionally stout short track program flexed
serious muscle at Bristol.
All this means that Andretti is likely to
be a stout force in the 2001 season. It also means, despite their own troubles
so far, his teammates #44 Buckshot Jones and #45 Kyle Petty will also improve,
as the PE organization has shown a stronger togetherness than some other
multi-car teams.
The other two PE Dodges showed potential
at Bristol, as Kyle ran in the top ten for the first third of the race before
the engine shut off, and Buckshot Jones logged good laps before a crash knocked
him out.
The only downside was the penalty for the
car being too low – a curious occurrence as the Pettys tend to be more
conservative than other teams in car preparation and thus potential rulebook
pushing, heeding Richard’s famous observation, "It isn’t the fastest car
that wins, but the quickest."
In all, it was another smashing –
deliberate pun – success at Thunder Valley, and it added more spice to what is
becoming the most spectacular season Winston Cup may have ever seen.