Bristol Baby!!!!

Tennessee spin cycle
March 23, 2006

Fans love Bristol Motor Speedway because wild and unpredictable racing is pretty much guaranteed at the high-banked short track. Drivers approach the Bristol beast with excitement, but also the dread of an afternoon spent in frustration.

With 43 cars on a half-mile track, there's not a lot of breathing room. Tempers can and do flare.

"You just don't have time to relax. Everything happens so fast," says Tony Stewart, the 2001 Sharpie 500 winner. "All it takes is a small bobble on someone's part to cause a chain reaction of guys bumping into each other."

And experience doesn't seem to figure in at Bristol. Kurt Busch has four victories here, but a crash relegated him to a 35th-place finish in last year's Food City 500. At Bristol, one small miscalculation can lead to a spin, a pile-up, a wrecked car -- or 10. Anything can happen -- and fans love it. But the drivers?

"Bristol is a track that's feast or famine," says Stewart. "We've had more long days than good days. But we finished third back in April to finally get a good finish there, and we backed it up in the night race with a top-10. Hopefully, it's a sign of better things to come."