BRISTOL, Tenn. — It’s Bristol, baby, but what does that mean for today’s race?
A race where tire wear is prevalent? Maybe.
A race that sees Denny Hamlin score a third consecutive victory? Possibly.
A race where mistakes will determine who is racing for the win and who isn’t? Count on it.
Here’s a look at what to watch for in today’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway:
Drivers to watch
Favorites: Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson. The two have combined to win five of the last eight races on the concrete at Bristol. Hamlin seeks to win his third consecutive race of the season after victories the past two weeks at Martinsville and Darlington. Larson seeks to win his second race of the weekend. After finishing second in Friday’s Craftsman Truck race, Larson won Saturday’s Xfinity Series race.
Keep an eye on: Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell. Blaney has been fast much of this season but has yet to reach Victory Lane. He lost the lead on pit road ahead of the overtime restart last weekend at Darlington. Bell has five top-three finishes in the first eight races of the season, including the past two events.
Don’t overlook: Brad Keselowski and Alex Bowman. Keselowski needs a good run. His average finish is 26.1, the worst of his career eight races into a season. He finished third in last spring’s race at Bristol when drivers had to manage tire wear. Could the same thing happen today? Bowman starts on the pole and finished in the top 10 in both Bristol races last year. He’s opened the season with five top 10s in the first eight races this year.
Bristol is one of Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s better tracks, having scored four top-five and seven top-10 finishes there.
Nice and easy might get to the checkered flag first
With drivers expecting tire wear to be a factor, similar to last spring’s race, pole-sitter Alex Bowman explains what it could be like for drivers to manage tires in today’s race.
“In the spring last year, we rode around at what felt like half speed all day, and I thought I was going to get out of the car and everybody was going to be mad because we didn’t run hard all day,” Bowman said. “Everybody loved it because there was so much chaos. So in the fall, we just ran hard all day. You run hard every lap, and that’s kind of what Cup racing has become these days … how hard you have to run the car.
Tire wear was the focus of Cup teams Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“There are some places you have to manage, but for the most part, you’re ten-tenths every lap. I think (Sunday), it’s really going to depend on when the cautions come out and what they do. Like you look at the end of that spring race, and we didn’t get any cautions for a lot of things that could have been cautions, probably. But at the beginning of the race, we were getting cautions all the time. So there’s two ways to predict that, right? If you save too much and you keep getting all these cautions, you’re just giving away track position. But if you don’t get the cautions and you run too hard, you’re killed on that, too.
“So it’ll be interesting to see what the mindset is there and what the reality that we live in (Sunday), as far as what the tires do with it being a little warmer and where we go. So I think the biggest thing is it’s going to be a ton of learning on the go because as much as we all think we know exactly what it’s going to do from practice, we probably really don’t have a clue, and we’re going to have to learn as we go.”
Watch pit road
Bristol is the only track with pit stalls on the frontstretch and backstretch.
During cautions, all cars must enter pit road at Turn 2 even if their pit stall is on the frontstretch.
One of the challenges for drivers is driving around the curve on the apron in Turns 3 and 4. Drive too close to the inside wall and a driver will short cut the radius of the corner and be hit with a speeding penalty. That’s what happened in Ty Gibbs in last fall’s playoff race.
Others have been caught in that area in past races. There are three pit road timing segments on the apron in Turns 3 and 4. So, if you see or hear of a pit road penalty in sections 6, 7 or 8 of pit road, it came in that apron section between Turns 3 and 4.
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