Cup drivers try to figure out "new" Bristol layout

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- That Bristol Motor Speedway president Jeff Byrd revealed Friday morning on Sirius NASCAR Radio the track formerly the highest-banked in NASCAR is, in fact, no longer; won't change the racing action in Saturday night's Sharpie 500.

But according to defending race winner Matt Kenseth, who actually swept both the Nextel Cup and Busch Series night races a year ago here at "Thunder Valley," the new concrete job and concurrent reconfiguration of the track's banking in a "progressive" fashion will make a difference, though he "couldn't see it."

"It's quite a bit different," Kenseth said Friday afternoon. "I know everybody does something different -- I know a lot of people have points they look at -- I never really do that.

"I just kind of do it by feel, so [the new look] doesn't really matter to me that much."

But the feeling among most of the Nextel Cup competitors on Friday was that a racier, maybe less chaotic Bristol was in the offing.

Byrd, appearing on Friday morning's The Morning Drive, said in its new mode the racetrack is banked 24 degrees at the bottom and moves through 26 and 28 degrees of banking, to a 30-degree angle against the outside wall.

The track was formerly billed as being banked 36 degrees, three more than Talladega Superspeedway and five more than Daytona, which have 33- and 31-degree banking, respectively, in the corners. Byrd said engineers on the most recent project couldn't confirm that fact, which Byrd said was proclaimed when Speedway Motorsports bought the track and when it was initially surfaced with concrete in the early 1990s.

But Kenseth said that he who maneuvers best in those outside grooves might determine who ends up in Victory Lane Saturday night. And that certainly appeared to be the case in Friday night's Food City 250.

"It does drive a lot different," Kenseth said. "I think in general everybody is gonna see probably a better race. There's a lot more possibilities to run side-by-side. I caught a slower car in [practice] traffic and instead of sitting there and being behind him and keep trying to get under him; I just drove outside of him and went around him.

"We've never been able to do that before. I think the preferred groove in [Turns] 3 and 4 in the race is probably gonna be the high side."

Carl Edwards, who will start Saturday's Cup race seventh and had the fastest time in Friday's Happy Hour learned a lot by watching some of the Craftsman Truck Series race on Wednesday night.

"I got the chance to sit up there in Turn 3 the other night and watch the end of the truck race," Edwards said. "It looked to me like people are gonna be able to hang on, on the outside and maybe even make some passes on the outside, where in the past, if you were running along in line and somebody moved you out of the way or you'd slip up, you would fall back.

"Now, it looks like there will be truly two or three grooves of racing. I don't know if you can take any of the bumping and banging out of Bristol -- it's still a really small track and you're going really fast. [Right now] I can't tell what line is going to be fastest at the end of the race."

As he often does, Dale Earnhardt Jr., a former Bristol winner, was marching to the beat of a different drummer on Friday.

"It's different," Earnhardt said. "I think it's going to be a lot of fun. It's a lot wider. I would have rather them asphalted it because I think we can get to the top a little better. But I'm sure we'll work the top groove.

"It looks like all the drivers in the truck race were pretty happy and I expect us to be the same. The tire is a little hard, but that's just a precaution I believe, for the new surface. A little softer tire the next couple trips, it'll be a lot of fun."

In 17 career starts, the veteran John Andretti has completed 88 percent of his laps at Bristol, but a hot qualifying lap in the No. 49 BAM Racing Dodge was the most critical for the driver whose best finish is second in the spring 2001 event. He'll start 28th Saturday night but sees plenty of possibilities for everyone.

"I think you can attack the racetrack a little bit different and a little bit harder," Andretti said. "There's a lot of different grooves throughout the corners, and even if you don't hit the one groove where you got the left front tire right on the white line entering the corner, you don't have to be there [any more].

"Before, if you went in too hard and you missed it by just a little -- it wasn't good. Now, it's a lot more of a racetrack."

But Andretti says some things will never change.

"There's still going to be a lot of crashing, a lot of mean people -- a lot of frustrated people [at the end]," Andretti said. "But before, you had nowhere to hide. Now, they can go high or go low and get themselves around you, so I think crashed cars and things like that won't be a big deal [for the leaders], either."