All due respect, but Bristol is overrated

By DAVID GREEN

This will be considered heresy by many NASCAR fans, especially the 160,000 or so who regularly fill the massive grandstands at Bristol Motor Speedway. But lately, racing at the half-mile concrete bowl is about as bad as it gets in NASCAR.

There is no track, anywhere, oval, road course, whatever, that is more single-groove than Bristol has become. Get out of the groove, either by your own miscue or with the help of somebody else's front bumper, and you are toast. The freight train that will rumble past on your left is every bit as bad as the better-known ones at Talladega Superspeedway. You get back in line only when the caboose goes past.

The only way you pass somebody on the outside at Bristol is when you are prohibitively faster than they are.

In terms of honest, driver-versus-driver battling, the best action of the weekend was in Istanbul, not Bristol (to steal a lyrical idea from songwriter Jimmy Kennedy). Sunday's Turkish Grand Prix was a much more entertaining race than Saturday night's Sharpie 500.

If you count freight-train passes as one, rather than as individual overtakings, and adjust by numbers of cars in the field (22 F1 cars, just more than half the NASCAR-standard 43), the Formula One race probably had more changes of position on the track in 58 laps than were seen at Bristol in 500 laps.

I can hear Keith Ott doing his John McEnroe impersonation now ("You CANNOT be SERIOUS!!!"). Ah, but yes, Chief. I'm serious.

Apologies to the folks at Speedway Motorsports Inc. and especially BMS publicist Wayne Estes, a truly good guy who once gave me $20 after he and some other colleagues had enjoyed a great night of poker at the expense of yours truly. That was the one and only time I've played cards for money in the past 30 years. Wayne had the primary beneficiary of my losses, and as I was very close to broke, I accepted his rebate.

But the fact is, as speeds have increased, Bristol has changed from a track where heated competition was as good as it gets to today's low levels. Once upon a time, drivers could race three-wide in three-way fights for position, battles in which nobody had a clear advantage strictly based on how far away his car was from the outside retaining wall.

Yes, yes, I know -- everything changes. Everything, that is, except the hype about Bristol. Now, it is the track where speeds are breathtakingly fast and crashes happen in an eyeblink's time, but where actual fighting for position is all but gone. Nowhere is the "bump and run" more of an effective tool. And, even on the occasions in which a driver gets inside position cleanly, on entrance to a corner, his job is done. Unless the competitor slams the door and takes one or both of them out of the action, the pass is automatic once inside-outside position is determined.

Sure, the sparks fly. Of course, tempers flare. That's because of frustration and the kind of misbehavior it breeds. The masses eat it up. Of course, we could probably sell tickets to plane crashes, too, if we could only predict when and where they were going to occur.

In one respect, Bristol is the perfect track for many -- perhaps most -- of NASCAR's present fan base. It can be a glorified demolition derby, and that's always fun to watch if wrecks are what you want to see. And, as a Cingular poll suggested during Saturday night's broadcast, a majority of fans think the B&R is a legitimate overtaking maneuver.

Those of us with longer memories recall when the action at Bristol truly was "racing like it oughta be."