A Look Back at the CARS Tour’s Time at Bristol Motor Speedway

It’s Bristol, baby.

Once upon a team, even the CARS Tour shared that sentiment.

In honor of NASCAR’s trip to the east Tennessee half-mile, we’re going back in time this week to review the zMAX CARS Tour’s time at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Rather than joining NASCAR as a support division, the CARS Tour visited Bristol for its own event from 2017 to 2020, with two Late Model Stock car races and four Super Late Model races during that time.

The event was known as the Short Track U.S. Nationals, featuring multiple divisions each year.

For the inaugural event in 2017, both the Late Model Stock cars and Super Late Models were in action, with star-studded fields in each race. Drivers such as Bubba Wallace, Josh Berry, Anthony Alfredo, Chandler Smith, Noah Gragson were in attendance.

On the Late Model Stock side, it was Myatt Snider who took the win, snagging the lead for the final time on lap 60 and never looking back. He led a grand total of 80 laps en route to the win.

Wallace was victorious in the Super Late Model feature, taking the lead from Smith on lap 34 and pacing the final 67 laps for the win.

Both divisions returned in 2018, once again bringing stacked fields with them. All the late model regulars were in attendance. They were joined by Berry, Ty Gibbs, Sam Mayer, Corey Heim, Stewart Freisen and others.

Weather threatened the weekend, but Tthe Super Late Model feature went the distance. Raphael Lessard took the victory after 100 laps over Freisen and Heim, recording his fifth win of his CARS career in a Super Late Model.

The Late Model Stock feature was less fortunate. It was cut short by weather, called after just 64 laps. Late Model Stock star Lee Pulliam took the win in what was ultimately the final Late Model Stock event at Bristol.

The Super Late Models returned once again in 2019 and 2020, with Stephen Nasse and Trever Noles each taking home a victory. That proved to be the end of the road. With the addition of dirt racing during the spring season at Bristol in 2021, the event was scrapped and late models have not returned since.

Now that NASCAR’s spring event has returned to the concrete at Bristol, the opportunity has once again presented itself for late models to return to the facility, but whether or not they will remains unknown at this time.

Late Model Stock cars stopped racing at the track after 2018 because the load…