BRISTOL, Tenn. – Sunday’s Food City 500 finished as a green, white, checker.
Shocked? You shouldn’t be. This is, after all, Bristol Motor Speedway, where bumping and banging is the norm and anything can happen at any time.
A caution right at the end? That’s typical, right?
But this particular race proved to be anything but the norm. Sure, the racing was door-to-door and bumper-to-bumper – it always will be in this place – but there was no wrecking.
In fact, the race was so clean that no one could remember anything quite like it here.
“That was the fastest 500-lap race I’ve ever been a part of,” driver David Ragan said. “It was just a real long day.”
There were nine cautions for 58 laps, but nearly all of them were for single-car incidents. There were no multi-car pileupss such as the one that marred last summer’s Sharpie 500.
The racing was so clean, in fact, that cars raced and raced for long stretches. At one point, the cars ran and chased and passed without incident for 115 laps. It was the sort of racing you’d expect at a longer track, but not on this half-mile oval, where there is almost no margin for error.
But, on this warm, sunny afternoon, drivers were able to maneuver their way through heavy lap traffic without incident. It seemed so completely unlike Bristol.
It’s the sort of thing some long-time race fans have complained about since the track was resurfaced in 2007. That makeover, they say, took away much of the character of the place. The bumping and banging that made BMS so special just isn‘t the same any more.
It sure looked that way on Sunday.
But drivers insisted all weekend that there‘s nothing wrong with the new track, saying that it’s more conducive to racing because there is now more room from top to bottom for passing. As Kevin Harvick put it on Friday: “You don’t have to knock someone out of the way to get past them.”
Sunday’s race definitely played out that way.
Sure, there were some nudges from behind during the 500 laps – it only seemed as if Jamie McMurray was involved in every one of them -– but there was none of the race-changing bumps that occurred during the two races here last season.
Not that the drivers wouldn’t have tried to create a little havoc if they could have. Runner-up Denny Hamlin said he would have knocked teammate and eventual winner Kyle Busch out the way if he would have gotten the chance. Third-place finisher Jimmie Johnson said he would have done the same thing.
“Sure I would have,” Hamlin said. “He’s won too much.”
But, to do that, Hamlin would have had to catch Busch first.
And on this Sunday, when Bristol was fast and a lot less contentious than usual, that was impossible to do.
jcnockaert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2572
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