Who … should you be talking about after the race?
Heading into Easter Sunday (April 9), the talk had been about how a driver from a dirt racing background had yet to win the first two Bristol Motor Speedway Dirt races.
That was finally put to rest this weekend, as Christopher Bell led the final 100 laps of the Food City Dirt Race and held off a hard-charging Tyler Reddick to score his fifth NASCAR Cup Series win and his first of the 2023 season.
Bell elected to stay out after the end of the second stage, and that proved to be the winning call as Reddick and all the others that pitted ran out of time to run him down on fresh rubber.
And after a 28th-place finish by Ross Chastain, Bell now finds himself in the regular season points lead after eight races of the 2023 season.
And don’t forget Austin Dillon. It had been a struggle to start the season for the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team, as Dillon had recorded just one top-10 finish and sat 25th in points after seven races.
Dillon, who has plenty of dirt experience himself, first turned heads by qualifying second via Saturday’s (April 8) heat races. And although he was unable to lead a lap, he proved to be a thorn in the leader’s side for all 250 laps of the night.
In a much-needed showing of speed, Dillon scored 18 stage points, had an average running position of fourth and ended the night with a third-place finish. While it wasn’t a win, it was arguably Dillon’s best showing from start to finish in recent memory.
What … is the big question leaving this weekend in the rearview?
The hot topic before the race even started was the penalties levied against Alex Bowman and William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports.
The team previously had 100-point penalties against the louvers of its four cars rescinded on appeal, and the cars of Bowman and Byron were later taken back to NASCAR’s Research and Development center after the following race at Richmond Raceway.
The Nos. 24 and 48 teams then proceeded to get penalized again.
It seemed suspicious that Bowman and Byron’s cars were the ones randomly selected for R&D teardown last weekend, that is until the bombshell reveal that random selection had been discontinued at an unknown date.
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