Article By Tom Baker/Steering Wheel Nation.  Photo By Meg Oliphant/Getty Images

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Sunday's Food City 500 NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway was simply epic.  It was the first time in years that I watched a Cup series race and saw 40 drivers' heads nearly explode trying to think about how to manage their cars and tires and finish a short-track race.  

-This race had 54 lead changes among 17 drivers.  
-It featured tires that were complete junk after 50 laps if a driver didn't manage them well.  
-It saw fast cars like Ty Gibbs be able to rocket from 20th to the lead but then wind up outside the top five because of traffic and so much differential in new tires vs old tires. 

This race was what all racing should be - it was a race that had to be managed with the pedals, not by computer data telling the driver how much fuel he has left down to the last drop while the drivers plant the pedal to the floor for three hours.  

Yet, I still saw a few "fans" blowing their tires over it on social media afterward. 
 
"It was a half-throttle race."
"The tires were junk!"
"That race was a disaster!"
"That looked like F1 at Indy!"

Fans were complaining because drivers had to...slow down... to finish or win the race! 

What?  

Even some of the drivers were complaining.  Defending Cup champ Ryan Blaney was very vocal about his displeasure after the race.  Blaney finished 16th, so his attitude isn't totally surprising.

Kyle Larson said after the race that he "Would never want to do that again."

Other drivers and crew chiefs loved it.  Chris Gabehart, crew chief for winner Denny Hamlin, said in a March 17th, 2024 NASCAR.com article by George Wrinkler, "The entire weekend was nothing like anyone expected, and called it "a blast".  

Hamlin noted in the same article, "Once it got into that tire management type of race, certainly my history in late models where you had to do that big-time certainly paid off."  

Now, those two were on the winning team, so they also would have to be considered to be biased opinions, I suppose.  

I haven't enjoyed a Cup race so much in years, so I will just respectfully disagree with Blaney and Larson.  I think the current generation of Cup racers has been spoiled by having cars whose front ends are so low into the track that at times the splitters rub on the track's surface.     

After all the duds I've watched at Bristol in the past ten years, and the unfortunate experiment to put dirt on one of the series' raciest tracks and race GT Touring cars on it, I was truly thankful to see a race there that reminded me of the glory days of NASCAR when the cars were hard to drive.

So, where will we go from here? 

Will NASCAR and the teams just let this moment be just a moment by bringing a tire for the fall that lasts too long and adds the NASCAR nap back into the next Bristol race? 

It would seem to me that adding enough horsepower to create the same degree of driving difficulty could be a more organic and less extreme way to put throttle management back into the equation at many of the tracks. But NASCAR is not in favor of it, and again, the drivers are split on whether it makes racing better or not.  

Most drivers seem to agree that it would make it more fun, but some believe it will also create more separation between the cars, which they view as a negative. 

As a fan, I want to see more drivers slideways halfway through a run and have to use strategy and patience in a Cup race again. 

I'm tired of pushing, bump-drafting, and "aero tight".  None of those things belong in NASCAR.  Make the drivers get off the gas and on the brakes and make them have to manhandle the cars like Cale and Dale and Bobby and Buddy and Richard used to.  

Time will tell whether this was a moment in time or a moment of awakening.

IndyCar had a similar moment in 2015 at Fontana Speedway, when they had a race that featured 80 lead changes and over 3,000 on-track passes and had bars across the nation turning baseball games off in favor of watching the rest of the race after social media lit up with everyone talking about how incredible it was as it was happening.  

What should have been a clear mandate to seek more of those types of high-speed on-the-edge races turned into Indy Car officials and even some of its most experienced drivers saying it was too dangerous and must not happen again.  

Are you kidding me?   

Now Indy Cars do much of their racing on lower-speed street circuits where passing is a premium.  The sheer power and speed of the car are wasted on these tight circuits, and although some of those events have strong attendance, the TV ratings are nowhere near what either NASCAR or F1 provide.  

Based on the attitudes of some of the drivers like Blaney and Larson, and NASCAR's continued restraint on adding horsepower under the guise of "saving cost" (as if dragging the teams across the country to a made-for-Hollywood exhibition race in California before your biggest race of the year every year saves anyone money), if there's a prop bet as to whether NASCAR lets the tire situation allow fall Bristol racing be just as exciting as this race was, I'd bet the under.  

I'll be happy if I'm wrong.    

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