I watched one of the practice sessions....what a dusty mess

Not their brightest idea . TN this time of year is a crap shoot. There have only been two weekends all year so far that it hasn't rained or snowed. This might have worked had they did it for the August race but not in the spring. It is still raining here now, I live about 15 miles from the track. They will be lucky to get it dry enough to run on tomorrow.

Can you imagine what the garage area, camping area looks like...seems like a tough weekend for the racers and crews.

Thats too bad as it looked awesome for the 3 laps it lasted

Guess when you have those who don;t race making the decisions you get things like this.

"But is sounded like a great idea sitting in a nice dry air conditioned office meeting room"

Still sound like a great idea when you are leading

Gus

Until you start to lap traffic

Soak the front with PAM non-stick cooking spray and keep going?

You should see some of the motorcycle races that get run in the mud. If it weren't for the transponders you'd have no idea who is who or how many laps they have made. They all look like chocolate statues after a few laps.

Back when they ran dirt at Tucson Raceway Park I don't believe they even had windshields just a sort of expanded metal guard, but that was over 20 years ago so my mind might be misremembering.

They use wire mesh screens as windows on the off road closed course race trucks and buggies. Just have to wipe your helmet face shield off as needed.

Yep...pit crewed years ago on a short track dirt team. Ran a wire mesh type screen and tear-offs on the helmet. Some of the most fun you'll ever have! Dirt's for racing...asphalt's for getting there!!!!

The ISDT in Sweden, the final MX test where they run all of the international team riders by class for one last test at the end of Six Days of 200 miles a day off road competition. This is the 500cc class and by this point this "ditch" was so difficult to ride through almost all of the riders were stuck. Some got through, some didn't. I was in the 175 class and actually found a line on the right of the photo (left riding) and got enough traction and speed to clear or jump it starting on the second of 10 laps. Some of the deepest ruts at a Six Day event, especially when you run 10 laps on a short course MX track with over 400 riders. I don't know why my bike was so clean and the front of me was so muddy. It was pouring down rain, and really heavy and there were a couple of "water holes" with nice clean water to run through on the track so maybe that's what cleaned the bike.........also I was up front in second and third all of the race after finding that line to jump the ditch that stuck a lot of the other racers. You get lucky sometimes finding a good line.

I haven't really watched any of it but this dirt track deal at bristol has had people talking about NASCAR and that hasn't happened in awhile. I think if the weather was better it would have been a great show, I don't normally watch it all and had interest this weekend but forgot all about it.

The truck race is supposed to start at noon eastern

Will bee interesting on how this will change the track before the cup series


Looking forward to Road America this summer when the cup series runs in July

This was the coolest thing NASCAR, or a track, has done in my lifetime. I NEVER would have guessed they'd do something like that, what a unique race. I fully planned to watch it live yesterday had it not rained, and I haven't watched a race in fifteen years.

Heavy dust, but the the parts of it I watched were fun.

We watched the whole thing. It was fun to watch, but really it was a series of 50 lap races. The had a scheduled "safety caution" which was a red flag so everyone could pit, change tires, clean up the mud and refuel. They restarted in the position they we in before the caution. Then they red flagged the thing after the 1st segment and did the pit stop thing again, and the worked the track over for 3 minutes. They restarted in the same position they were in when they stopped, which they did every time they stopped the race. There were a few crashes that red flagged the race, and another scheduled "safety red flag after 50 laps. The next stop was the 2nd segment red flag where the worked the track over again, then they ran up to a last lap crash and then finished with the green, white and checkered.

The track was dry, dusty, a bit rough,and started getting black slick after a few laps. At every stop the worked the track, which gave then 2-3 lanes to race on for a few laps before it got hard slick again. They announced that the Spring Bristle next year was going to be dirt again.

All in all, it was pretty entertaining for being a NASCAR race.I'll be watching next year as well. Gene

I'm glad they tried something to do something different.

Got people talking about the Bristol race again, although it didn't go perfectly.

i admit i thought it was going be a cluster f but after watching some vid on you tube didnt look bad

Sprint car racing has had this worked out forever. You don't run windshields, you use tear offs! Duh!

The boys in the booth were talking about the windshields. According to them, NASCAR had always required the cup cars to run full windshields on dirt back in the old days. I think most of the drivers would much rather have ran without the windshields. Probably would have been a better race if the drivers could have seen better. I think all the drivers were complaining about not being able to see, especially when the sun was starting to go down and they were trying to see through the mud and dirt covered windshields as they were driving into the setting sun.

How many laps did the trucks run? Sprint cars, of course, are a lot shorter races. Had the track been a dry slick they likely wouldn’t have had a problem other than dust...

NASCAR seems to have always been a stickler for a lot of the old rules that continue to be carried over, and over and over. Gravity re-fueling (cans), 5-lug nut wheels, 15" steel wheels all around, hinged hood and trunk lids (no Lift-Off-Hoods in NASCAR or lift off trunk lids) manual lift (floor) jack (no air lift jacking). Lug nut air (hose) guns, (not battery or electric) so you can get penalized for running over the hose and possibly injure someone with a flying air gun. Probably a few more such as push rod V8 engines,and no peanuts in the pits or car Now I know that windshields are still one of those carry overs too. Anything else?

I don't know how many laps the tracks ran, the track looked good at the start of the cup race. Probably within 15 laps, the 2 main grooves were already turning black from the rubber put down coming off the corners. At our old northern IL home clay track, when the groove was turning black, the track was pretty hard, and slick. By the end of the cup race, nearly all the corners and 1/2 way down the straights were black. The guys were pulling dirt track tires off after less then 50 laps that were almost as smooth as slicks.

During every stop, the track watered the top of the track and packed it in, but dust was an issue on each restart for a few laps, then it was pretty much just a hanging haze in the air. I suspect it was probably the dust cloud settling back onto the track when the racing stopped for 3-5 minutes until they got it all airborne again.

Speaking of sprintcars, did you see that long time Sammy Swindell car owner and TMC trucking owner Harold Annett passed away earlier this month? His son is Michael Annett.

Scroll down to Brad Doty's post on March 5th to see a clip of the funeral procession. That's going out in style.

NASCAR did allow several changes to the cars for the dirt race, but loosing the windshield wasn't one of them. Maybe for next year? Also, for next season the cup cars are suppose to go to the big center spindle nut instead of the 5 lug nuts, and I've heard of air lift jacks on the cars, but don't know if that's true. I believe they may also be forced fuel filling. Last year the cars all went to fuel injection.

As far as lift off hoods & trunk lids, NASCAR has too many crashes. There have already been departed hoods and trunk lid becoming flying objects in recent years even with the hinges and they are supposed to be tethered to the cars. I think a trunk lid came off a car last year and flew into the stands and injured several people. I wouldn't expect to see lift off body panels at all in NASCAR. You may be right about the push rod V8 engines too, I think every brand running has to use the same GM based heads, so the Ford and the Toyota engines are redesigned to run the GM based heads.

Wow, that is REALLY fitting!

In my case I was always more of a Kinser fan (who I posted above) than a Sammy fan, but I ALWAYS appreciated how immaculate Sammy kept his sprint car. You also see that on all the TMC equipment you see traveling the highways and interstates around here too. TMC obviously puts a LOT of effort into maintaining their image and their equipment.