NASCAR Needs a Dirt Race, But Maybe Not at Bristol

What Happened?

BRISTOL, Tenn. – Christopher Bell kept the lead away from fellow dirt racer Tyler Reddick long enough for a last lap caution to end the NASCAR Cup Series Bristol Motor Speedway dirt race on Sunday night, April 9. Austin Dillon finished third with Ricky Stenhouse Jr and Chase Briscoe rounding out the top five.

It is Bell’s fifth Cup Series victory and his first in a NASCAR dirt race since his win at Eldora Speedway in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event there in 2015.

But What Really Happened?

With this race’s future still undetermined for 2024 and beyond, some changes may be on the horizon for its future.

But what does that entail?

Should we put an end to the dirt racing experiment altogether because of some of the groaning over this event? Or do we let it ride into next year and cross our fingers that everyone will magically start to love dirt racing? Spoiler alert – they won’t.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s time to finally put a real honest-to-God dirt track on the Cup Series schedule.

The Truck Series did it for seven years straight at Eldora, which turned the race into a crown jewel fan favorite for the series and became a beacon for dirt racing veterans outside of NASCAR to give the big heavy stock cars a shot on their own turf.

But gone are those days. With Bristol, the annual dirt track visit feels more artificial than before. We now get less of those dirt ringers than we had before for both Trucks and Cup.

And those that do show up don’t seem to be that impressed with it.

When it comes to schedule changes and new experiments that NASCAR has tried in the previous years, the Bristol dirt race is a real hot potato among race fans.

Many wonder why the sport has decided to take away a race date for one of the most popular short tracks on the Cup Series calendar for the sake of having a dirt feature. Then there are those that don’t see any need to have a dirt race at all.

And a few of them know a thing or two about dirt racing.

So, with the swirling mass of controversy surrounding this race, and only a few of those outspoken voices actually being in favor of having the event, why are we doing it in the first place?

Well, the NASCAR schedule has become one of, if not the most, diverse racing schedules on the planet. There is no…