Around the Track: Bristol

Bristol Motor Speedway is a .533-mile concrete oval with 36-degree banking -- the highest in NASCAR -- in its four turns. The banking on the front and backstretch, which are each 650 feet long, is 16 degrees; and the frontstretch is bisected at its midpoint by the start/finish line.

The track has separate front and backstretch pit areas that are used simultaneously -- leading to interesting strategic decisions as well as miscues.

The track, known as "Thunder Valley," is part of the Speedway Motorsports family of facilities and is one of three "short tracks" on the Nextel Cup Series -- or venues that are shorter than one mile in length.

When I think of Bristol, I just think "craziness.'" Whoever built that track is pretty insane.

The idea even of what Bristol is all about is crazy. It's a heck of a lot of fun to run there. It's so unlike anything else that we do, that it's actually fun, because it breaks things up.

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It's very easy to get caught up in somebody else's wreck there. It's very easy to cause a wreck there, or to be the wreck.

You've got to go to that race and trying to run in the front. The more in the front you can run, the safer you are. When you're back there running 20th, it is tough.

It's hard to pass and it's easy to get run into the back of. It's like running through a minefield. You have to hope that you don't step on the landmine.

The biggest key to qualifying at Bristol is being able to hold your breath. Thirty seconds at Bristol, for two laps in qualifying trim, the workload is heavy. It's a tough, tough, tough place to qualify on.

It's so fast and things come so quick. You don't have time to adjust, as a driver to the car as it's changing from what you had in practice. It's a tough, tough racetrack.

It's fun to qualify on, but if you watch drivers after qualifying at Bristol, they're always out of breath. It's only 30 seconds and you can hold your breath for 30 seconds, but it's pretty intense.

Bristol is a one-groove racetrack. You have to be able to hug that bottom. You actually have to run your left side tires below the white line. Because it's a one-groove track, that's why we see so many incidents.

There's only one way around and that's underneath a guy. There are always people trying to root underneath somebody, so that causes contact. It doesn't take hardly any contact at Bristol to get you spinning and that's why we have so many incidents.

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Because things are happening so fast, a wreck happens five cars in front of you and you can't get slowed down -- and the next thing you know, you're in it.

You don't work on the outside lane in practice. If you're in the outside lane, you're dead. You do everything you can to keep from getting on the outside because you just can't run on the outside at Bristol.

There was a time when you could, but not now. It's right on the white line. I get mad when I leave the white line by three feet. I'll tell my spotter, "If you see me leave that white line, get on me," because the speed's down there on the bottom.

Before the race, I don't really have to remind my crew chief to keep getting on me about being patient. I'm a fairly patient driver. I talk more to my spotter about those kinds of things because I want my crew chief, Kevin Hamlin to be able to concentrate more on race strategy and what the car's doing.

I understand the importance of patience and I really don't have to have somebody reminding me of that. What I need is information, like how many laps have we run, and that kind of thing, because it's all happening so fast at Bristol that it's hard to keep up.

We've got two pit lanes at Bristol and the pitting procedures are different under yellow- and green-flag conditions. I haven't messed it up yet, knock on wood, but I'm sure I will at some point.

I asked NASCAR to make that rule change, where you use only your respective pit lane if you're pitting under green but you use both under yellow, five years ago. We were up there testing, and I actually rode around and timed it in a street car, and I said "This will fix it."

I found that it was so unfair for teams to be pitting on the back straightaway. It was so unfair that essentially, if you didn't qualify well enough to pick a frontstretch pit, your chances of winning were pretty much gone.

There were a few cases of people winning from the back straightaway, but it took special circumstances to do it. Even though the new rules have made pit road tough and inconvenenient to get on at times, it's the fairest way to do it and I applaud NASCAR for making the change.

As far as pit strategy and whether or not you can win with two tires as opposed to four -- I don't know the tire at Bristol so I'm not sure of that. Here recently, old tires have been better than -- or as good as -- new tires and you didn't get much benefit from new ones, so the strategy was to stay out as long as you could.

I don't know if that's going to be the case or not. If the new tires fall off as much as they have everywhere else, then you'll have to have new tires.

We finished fourth at Bristol last year, so I do feel good about coming back. We tested at Bristol, and we had a good race and a good qualifying effort last year. We were real fast in qualifying practice and then fast in Happy Hour.

We had a good race. We ran well all night and we finished fourth. We didn't have anything for Dale Earnhardt Jr. because he was the class of the field, but we led some laps and ran at the front of the field all night and it was a good night for us.

Hopefully we can build on that, for sure.

Jeff Burton, driver of the No. 31 Cingular Chevrolet, will take fans Around the Track each race week during the 2005 Nextel Cup season.