For the first time in 50 years, no that’s not a typo, the Cup cars are going dirt racing in a points-paying race in the regular season. The first Bristol race of the season has been swapped out for a dirt race by covering the trademark high-banked, concrete, half-mile racing surface with the new loose, reddish-brown surface. That’s right, they’re not racing at the Bristol Dirt track, they’re tuning Thunder Valley or The Last Great Colosseum into perhaps the fastest dirt track on the planet, depending on the driver skill you’re talking about.

Normally, this would be the Food City 500 or 500 laps around the half-mile short track but that’s simply too many laps to run in a dirt race so this one will be 250 laps or about 133 miles of chaos and craziness. With this not being a traditional Bristol race, this won’t be a traditional track breakdown as there really isn’t a wealth of data available on driver’s dirt histories that will be all that relevant to this weekend since no standard dirt tracks have banking to the degree that Bristol does and with this being a temporary track essentially, the way the track is being taken care of and set up has no history to draw from either since the last time they did this was for some ARCA series races more than a decade ago. Instead, I will go over strategies for the race and builds as well as highlighting the dirt histories of drivers as much as possible to give you some sneakier plays we may not be familiar with.

First of all, some strategy points for this race right off the bat, dirt races have a lot of mid-pack passing typically but it may take a while to make moves once you’re in the top-10 since the drivers in the top-10 are typically using the more dominant line on the track, to begin with. The race is 250 laps this weekend, not the typical 500 we see at Bristol and so while there are fewer shots for laps led and fastest laps, there’s still 175 dominator points on the table on DK and 25 laps led points for FanDuel which is more than enough to make a difference in a build. This race will be a race that can be approached similarly to some of the more wild races that are on the Cup schedule and somewhere between the Daytona and Talladega and road races. Guys that hit the wall won’t necessarily have their day end as aero isn’t all that important on dirt but guys sliding into each other can certainly end driver’s days and we can see multi-car pile ups, just as we’ve seen in the last few Eldora races. Most drivers we’ll keep under 30-35-percent draft percentage but drivers like Larson and Bell we can go over that given their experience on the surface in a multitude of cars.

Let’s talk a bit about the track itself. They’ve covered the high-banked oval in a ton, well several tons, of dirt and that should make for some nice three-wide racing as we can typically see at Bristol under normal conditions, with one major difference. That difference being, that these cars will get sideways in the corners. Not as much as an open-wheeled dirt car or a sprint car on a flatter track but they will get sideways as the drivers look for any semblance of grip on the surface. You will see the track change during the race too as it transforms and gets more shiny and grayish, that’s not the concrete coming through, that’s what happens to the dirt as it gets run on and packed down it slicks up, or adds grip. We will want to watch just how big of a cushion gets built up near the wall because that will determine just how close to the wall drivers will be able to put their cars and still find grip. Several drivers have been commenting that the dirt isn’t like a standard dirt track in that it isn’t quite as fluffy as you’d expect and a bit more clay-like which will change how the surface packs during the race.

Lastly, before we talk about some drivers, some of the procedures during the race will not be the same this week either. Pit stops will not be competitive meaning drivers can’t gain or lose spots based on how fast or slow pit stops are and there aren’t any green flag pits or pits under cautions either simply for safety concerns. The choose rule won’t be in play either simply because it’s impossible to get the orange spray-painted “V” to stay in place on dirt.

We’ll highlight a few drivers that have dirt history at this point and we’ll do it for both Trucks and Cup races since this track breakdown is more for both races.

Obviously, Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell are the two names that pop right away for dirt racers given what they’ve been doing in the last couple of years and the fact that Bell has beaten Larson in the Chili Bowl a couple of times. So let’s get past those two guys.

Full-Time Drivers With Dirt Experience:

Cup

  • Ricky Stenhouse Jr

  • Chase Briscoe

  • Kurt Busch

  • Tyler Reddick

  • Chase Elliott

  • Austin Dillon

Truck

  • Stewart Friesen

  • Hailie Deegan

  • Sheldon Creed

  • Ryan Truex

“Ringers” with Dirt Racing Experience:

Cup

  • Chris Windom

  • Mike Marlar

  • Stewart Friesen

  • Shane Golobic

Truck

  • Kyle Larson

  • Chase Briscoe

  • Bubba Wallace

  • JR Heffner

  • Jessica Friesen

  • Jake Griffin

  • Cody Erickson

  • Andrew Gordon