Lessons from Saturday, both Sprint Cup practices and Xfinity racing, showed the fastest way small, high-banked track is up near the wall.
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Despite efforts to create better racing by diminishing the area in recent years, the top groove continues to lure drivers like moths to a flame.
On Sunday, “It will be the top lane,” Kyle Busch said after the Xfinity race, in which Erik Jones used the high line to run away from challengers. “Everybody has been using the bottom, but nobody really moved up during practice … it kind of finally happened with about seven minutes left in final practice and we all started running the top. The race will be around the top and it will be the same frustrating single-file show tomorrow.”
And there it is; if every driver decides to ride the wall, fans will see a 40-car parade on the 0.533-mile track with half the field up and half down. Two lanes, no waiting — or crashing. NASCAR wants more intense racing, which the low-downforce package is supposed to provide.
Kyle Larson was kicking himself after Saturday’s race. He saw his chance to win slip away by taking a low line on the final restart.
“I knew I gave it away,” Larson told media members. “I’m really disappointed in myself. I just ran half a groove too low through (Turns) 3 and 4.”
Drivers paid attention to Saturday’s race results and to their experience in practice. They know there are two grooves on the track, but the low one makes passing difficult. So as they saw Saturday, getting stuck on the bottom for a restart is not a good idea.
With two days’ worth of rubber on the track and the warmest day of the weekend expected, lessons from early practice sessions on Friday and Saturday will be lost.
Bristol began trying to take away the high groove advantage in 2012, when it used grinding machines to reduce the concrete surface’s angle. The track had a progressive incline — 30 degrees at the top and 24 degrees downstairs.
The area that was ground away was “pretty much the only spot on the track that you can’t run on,” Martin Truex Jr. said ahead of the 2012 night race.
It backfired. The altered upper groove, Sporting News reported in 2013, “ended up having so much grip and drivers could carry so much momentum up there that the two lanes turned into the upper groove and part of the middle groove.”
Racers learned to negotiate the high groove, turning its danger into an advantage. A single groove worked because it created the car-mangling action fans craved.
“I love running up there because it reminds me of a slick dirt track with a big cushion,” Jeff Gordon said in 2012. “You just drive it really straight, just put it on the edge, and when you’re there it’s just great grip, and when you jump over it, you’re in the fence.”
Addition of SAFER barriers in 2015 drew near-universal praise, but it had a side effect. It tightened the best racing down into an even smaller area.
“Before you had a little bit of room, I don’t know, a foot so that is definitely going to change how we are race there,” Gordon told Fox Sports. “I hope it makes it more exciting, more action is what I’m hoping. Even if it doesn’t, I don’t care, I want the SAFER barriers inside and outside at all these tracks.”
Sunday, the high way likely will be the winning way.
