Kyle Larson, Kyle Bush latest to say that it’s probably time for NASCAR shut down the dirt experiment.
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NASCAR Cup teams were busy putting mud flaps – yes, mud flaps – on their race cars Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
That’s something you don’t see every day—every week, every year, not even every decade at NASCAR’s top level. But it illustrates the changes in store this weekend for the season’s only Cup dirt-track race—and only the second dirt event in the modern era of Cup racing.
It’s a carousel of sorts as NASCAR continues to try to figure out the best way to race cars built for high-speed paved speedways on a high-banked concrete track covered with a mountain of dirt.
It’s a difficult algorithm, one made even harder by the fact that horrible weather made last year’s Bristol Cup dirt debut a tough test case to build upon.
With Bristol’s traditional pair of concrete-surface races often some of the most entertaining events of the season, the return to the dirt experiment has been a tough sell in the Cup garage, even for defending series champion Kyle Larson, who built his resume on dirt surfaces and often proclaims his love for that form of competition.
Kyle Larson
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“I guess the way that I look at it (is) if we’re not going to take the windshields out, then why are we racing on dirt?” Larson told Sirius XM radio. “We just shouldn’t race on dirt if we’re not going to take the windshields out and actually have a dirt race with moisture in the track and being able to produce a real dirt race.
“I feel like we’re just wasting everybody’s time a little bit and not giving the fans and competitors what we all deserve. … I’m all for not putting dirt on Bristol whether we race with windshields or not.”
Vision was a problem during last year’s event, and some drivers, including Larson, offered the opinion that racing without windshields would be an improvement, although the switch from day racing to nighttime is expected to make dust less of an issue.
NASCAR ran tests with driver Stewart Friesen at Bristol last week but concluded that racing without windshields at the track would open the door to possible safety issues.
Kyle Busch
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Former champion Kyle Busch also has spoken out about the Bristol switch.
“Cut the cord,” Busch said. “As Richard Petty said, it takes our sport backwards. It’s a mess. Our cars, the tracks—it’s not indicative of putting on a good dirt show. And I’ve seen good dirt shows.”
Petty, NASCAR’s all-time victory leader, expressed doubt about the Bristol dirt concept when it was being shopped around the sport two years ago.
“I have to be careful here,” Petty told Autoweek in 2020, “because there’s some politics involved and I don’t want to annihilate NASCAR on this. I guess I’m looking at it from an old-time deal because we spent years and years and years trying to become a professional sport. Years and years to get away from that stigma (that racing wasn’t professional). But dirt-track racing is not professional, so we’re going backward. It would be like taking a professional football team and going back to play at a high school field.”
Some current drivers, including Ryan Blaney and Alex Bowman, have said NASCAR should pursue Cup racing on traditional dirt tracks if it continues to desire having that sort of venue on the schedule.
Results of Sunday’s race will play a role in determining NASCAR’s approach to future dirt activity.
Keyword: NASCAR Fascination with Dirt, Mud Flaps May Be Wearing Thin