Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee

Bristol Motor Speedway, formerly known as Bristol International Raceway and Bristol Raceway, is a NASCAR short track located in Bristol, Tennessee. Constructed in 1960, it held its first NASCAR race on July 30, 1961. Bristol is among the most popular tracks on the NASCAR schedule because of its distinct features, which include extraordinarily steep banking, an all-concrete surface, two pit roads, different turn radii, and stadium-like seating. It has also been named one of the loudest NASCAR tracks.

Bristol Motor Speedway is the fourth-largest sports venue in America and the tenth largest in the world, seating up to 146,000 people. The speeds are far lower than is typical on most NASCAR oval tracks, but they are very fast compared to other short tracks due to the high banking. Those features make for a considerable amount of car contact at the NASCAR races as the initial starting grid of 40 vehicles each in the Cup and Xfinity Series, and 32 in the Truck Series, extends almost halfway around the track, meaning slower qualifiers begin the race almost half a lap down.

Grandstand in 2007

The drag strip at this facility has long been nicknamed "Thunder Valley". Both NASCAR Cup Series races held at Bristol are for 500 laps; the spring race (historically a day race; however, the 2006 race ended under nighttime conditions because of Standard Time and the late afternoon start) is sponsored by area grocery chain Food City and considered one of NASCAR's top 10 annual races.[2] The late summer race (the popular night-time race, considered "the toughest ticket in NASCAR" to obtain) has rotated among several sponsors. From 2001 to 2015, Newell Rubbermaid sponsored the race, first under its Sharpie brand (2001–2009) and then its Irwin Tools brand (2010–2015). From 2016 to 2021, Bass Pro Shops became primary sponsor of the summer race, with the National Rifle Association as a secondary sponsor. In 2022, Bass Pro Shops became the sole entitlement sponsor of Bristol's September NASCAR Playoff Race.

The old scoring pylon in August 2007

Bristol is a fertile ground for other levels and types of racing; NASCAR Xfinity Series races often draw more than 100,000 spectators, making it one of the best-drawing Xfinity venues, and resulted in Fox televising the race nationally from 2004 to 2006 and ABC doing the same in 2007 and 2008.

In 2004, it was the first Busch Series race of the season televised on broadcast network television, and the race, which had been 150 laps in 1982, 200 laps in 1984, and 250 laps since 1990, was a 300-lap race in 2006.  READ MORE...

Living in Tennessee

This morning, FOX News had a segment on the hundreds of people that were leaving Democratic-controlled states and moving to Tennessee, specifically NASHVILLE.  But, the state of Tennessee is not just about Nashville...

• When I think of Nashville, I think of the home of Country Music...
• When I think of Memphis, I think of the home of Elvis Presley...
• When I think of Bristol, I think of the home of NASCAR....
• When I think of Knoxville, I think of the home of Oak Ridge National Laboratories...
• When I think of Chattanooga, I think of  Glenn Miller's Chattanooga Choo Choo and the revitalized riverfront, similar to the riverfront in San Antonio, Texas...

Tennessee is also the home of Jack Daniels whiskey and has the nickname of "Volunteers" that dates back to the Alamo and Davy Crockett...

And, what is not mentioned often is the Great Smoky Mountains which is the NUMBER ONE TOURIST ATTRACTION in the entire US of A...   imagine that?

Tennessee has a HUGE system of LAKES thanks to the TVA and the public works projects of the 1920s that put people to work because of the Great Depression.  And, where I am currently living, I have access to two lakes on either side of me, Cherokee and Douglas...  I can get to either lake in about 10-15 minutes.

About 40-60 minutes (depending upon traffic) away from my location, there is:

• Pidgeon Forge
• Dollywood
• Gatlinburg

Each of these tourist attractions went from just being opened in the summer months (circa 1990s) to being open 12 months a year (circa 2000s)...

Oak Ridge National Laboratories just outside of Knoxville, receives 80% of the Department of Energy's budget each year to work on a variety of projects for the Federal Government...  Currently, ORNL works on protecting nuclear materials to secure the peaceful use of energy production, medical applications, and scientific discovery around the world...

I moved over to TN in 1990 and 32 years later not only am I still here but I have no desire to live anywhere else...  I wear a t-shirt from April through December...  that's 8 months out of the year...  not bad.

Do yourself a favor...  come to TN for a visit...  stay a week or two, maybe three...  spend your money, but don't stay!!!

NASCAR: Electrified Stock Car Racing

Electric motorsport is a category of motor sport that consists of the racing of electric powered vehicles for competition, either in all-electric series, or in open-series against vehicles with different power trains. Very early in the history of automobiles, electric cars held several performance records over internal combustion engine cars, such as land speed records, but fell behind in performance during the first decade of the 20th century. 

With the renaissance of electric vehicles during the early 21st century, notable electric-only racing series have been developed, for both cars and motorcycles, including for example, the FIA Formula E Championship. 

In other racing events, electric vehicles are competing alongside combustion engine vehicles, for example in the Isle of Man TT and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and in some cases winning outright.  SOURCE: Wikipedia

NASCAR hasn't hidden its intention to electrify stock car racing in the coming years, but it may happen sooner than expected.

Documents uncovered by the Kickin' the Tires website reveal potential plans to launch an electric support series next year.

According to the report, NASCAR will demonstrate a prototype electric racing car during the Clash at the L.A. Coliseum pre-season event in February, then follow it up with a six-race series "aligned with Cup Series" weekends.

The cars will be modified Cup Series cars with fully electric, all-wheel-drive powertrains rated near 1,000 horsepower, compared to the 670 hp V8s used in the conventional vehicles.  READ MORE...

America is NASCAR

NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), sanctioning body for stock-car racing in North America, founded in 1948 in Daytona Beach, Fla., and responsible for making stock-car racing a widely popular sport in the United States by the turn of the 21st century.

Integral to NASCAR’s founding in the late 1940s was Bill France, an auto mechanic and sometime race-car driver. France had organized stock-car races in Florida throughout the 1930s and ’40s, and, after several unsuccessful attempts to create a series of races that would determine a national champion, in 1947 he created the National Championship Stock Car Circuit (NCSCC), a yearlong series of 40 races held across the southeastern United States. 

France was responsible for establishing and enforcing the technical regulations that governed the cars; creating a scoring system that would award drivers points used to determine a series champion; organizing and promoting each race; and awarding cash prizes to the winners of races and to the series champion. These would become NASCAR’s primary tasks as a sanctioning body.

Although the NCSCC was successful, France had greater ambitions. He convened a series of meetings in December 1947 in Daytona Beach attended by racetrack owners and race-car owners and drivers and intended to establish a still-larger stock-car-racing series. What emerged from those meetings was NASCAR, which replaced the NCSCC. France was its first president. The first race sanctioned by NASCAR was held on Jan. 4, 1948, at Pompano Beach, Fla. In February of that year NASCAR was incorporated, with France the primary stockholder.

In 1949 NASCAR changed the rules governing the cars: whereas in 1948 “modifieds”—cars varying in age and in the mechanical modifications made to them for the purpose of racing—were allowed to compete, from June 1949 only late-model (recently manufactured) stock cars were permitted. Races that year were called Strictly Stock races, and Red Byron became the series champion.

France changed the name of the series to Grand National in 1950, a name used until 1971, when the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds bought sponsorship rights to the series and renamed it the Winston Cup Series (it was also known as the Cup Series or NASCAR Cup Series). By then, stock cars had become purpose-built race cars; NASCAR’s rules required cars to resemble their stock counterparts in their dimensions and appearance, but car owners, drivers, and mechanics increasingly exploited those rules in their attempts to gain a competitive advantage. NASCAR was also responsible for mandating safety equipment in cars that, by 1970, had reached over 200 miles (320 km) per hour in nonrace conditions.      READ MORE...