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Bristol Will Deliver Real March Madness
Written by: Tom Jensen
Harrisburg, N.C. – 3/22/2006 It’s smackdown time. After three races of varying interest at the so-called intermediate tracks, the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series will spend the next two Sunday afternoons the way God and Big Bill France intended: knocking the snot out of each other on short tracks.

This Sunday, the action commences at Bristol Motor Speedway with the running of the Food City 500, then it’s off to Martinsville, Va., the following week for 500 more laps of hell.

Bristol, of course, is the fiercest oval on the planet, 0.533 miles of concrete with 36 degrees of banking in the corners and 43 drivers who pretty much stay pissed off for all 500 of the 15-second laps.

This track doesn’t just separate the men from the boys. Occasionally, it separates the teeth from the boys. There are plenty of guys who can talk the talk, but at Bristol, you find out who can walk the walk, too.

When a driver gets out of his car at Bristol, most of the words he utters are of the four-letter variety, none of them thanking his myriad sponsors or the boys back at the shop. Nothing is politically correct at Bristol and we’re better off for it.

At one race a few years back, two drivers exchanged fisticuffs in the hauler, while the wife of one of them stood out back, flipping her middle finger repeatedly at a throng of reporters and photographers waiting to see how the fight would end.

There’s a reason drivers have compared racing at Bristol to trying to fly a fighter jet in your basement or putting 43 cars inside a blender.

It’s hot, loud and noisy at Bristol. It’s also where you’ll see some of the toughest stock car racing in the world. Winning here depends less on what team you drive for or how many times the nose of your car has been shaped to the n-thousandth of an inch in the wind tunnel. No, winning at Bristol is about the size of the fight in the dog and the sheer, unbridled will to win. No nice guys need apply.

In 2000, when the late, great Dale Earnhardt knocked Terry Labonte into the wall on the last lap to win the August Bristol race, 140,000 or so fans nearly rioted in the aftermath. Most screamed their approval at seeing their idol win, but some actually tore their prized black No. 3 T-shirts off and threw them down in disgust. “God, I love this s—t,” Earnhardt grinned as he rode the elevator up to the press box for his winner’s interview.

Four years later, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. swept the Busch and Cup races at Bristol and delivered an eloquent post-race interview that saw him talk at length about coming to Bristol as a kid, and the tradition of the track and how his dad gave him tips on how to drive there. It was one of Junior’s finest moments as a driver, and one of his most articulate as a man.

http://www.speedtv.com/commentary/22684/