Which Bristol Is It, Baby?

1. Bristol Has Had Split Personalities This Season, and Neither Might Be the “Real” One

It’s no secret that NASCAR hasn’t been able to figure out what vexes the Next Gen Cup Series car at short tracks. The racing product has declined almost across the board the last few years, and Bristol Motor Speedway has been no exception.

This year’s spring race looked like it might have hit upon a fix thanks to Goodyear, which brought a rapidly wearing tire compound that turned the race into delightful chaos with normal strategy turned on its head. Gimmicky? Sure, but it was entertaining.

Despite assurances that the same tires were given to teams for the night race, it was about as night and day a difference as … well, night and day. No huge tire wear, no crazy comers and goers and virtually no passes for the lead as Kyle Larson smacked the field around all evening long.

Setting aside any conspiracy theories/debate about whether it was actually the same tire compound, there were differences in time of day, temperature and more between the spring and fall races. With that in mind, it wasn’t reasonable to expect the race would look the same as it did in the daylight a few months earlier.

But it also still didn’t really look like Bristol races of days gone by either. We might need next year to know for sure, but it’s starting to feel like the spring event was just a happy accident that might not be able to be replicated.

2. If That Was Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Final Race, At Least It Was Entertaining

Not with a whimper but with a bang. That’s as accurate a way as any to describe Dale Earnhardt Jr.‘s eventful Xfinity Series race at Bristol, where his seventh-place finish doesn’t begin to tell the whole story.

First his radio didn’t work, leaving him unable to communicate with longtime spotter TJ Majors. It took multiple pit stops and several fixes before that got settled. Along the way, he left his glasses in one of the replacement helmets and had to have them handed back to him later.

Junior later dropped the volume control, leaving Majors speaking too loudly in his ear. He got into some tangles on the track and ended up flipping off Riley Herbst, then retracting it later. But he persevered through all of it for a top-10 finish in his lone Xfinity appearance of 2024.

Earnhardt wouldn’t say for sure if this was it for him, but he has no plans to race in 2025. On one hand, it would be strange to think…