RaceSheets NASCAR DFS Preview: Food City Dirt Race

Following Kyle Larson’s victory at Richmond International Raceway, NASCAR leaves Virginia and heads to Tennessee to celebrate Easter the only way motorsports knows how. Therefore, let’s wrap up action from this past Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400, review numbers from last year at Bristol, and assess some expectations for this Sunday evening’s Food City Dirt Race at Bristol. 

Toyota Owners 400 Wrap Up

Two races in the new version of the Gen Seven short track package and two wins for Hendrick Motor Sports. Whatever limited short track data that HMS had going into 2023 has been on the money, as far as setups have gone, as they have been the class of the field at Phoenix and Richmond. 

Altogether, HMS drivers have combined to lead 493 of 771 laps with seven top-10 finishes (William Byron being the exception after he got punted by Christopher Bell late in Monday’s race, although he was running fourth at the time). The next time the Series uses this package will be at Martinsville in two weeks and HMS drivers will deserve our full attention as far as DFS is concerned. 

While not to the level of William Byron or Kyle Larson, there are other drivers who have shown a strong tendency to run well in this package too. Veterans like Ross Chastain, Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski, and even Michael McDowell have run up front consistently while young-gun Christopher Bell picked up where he left off in 2022 and carried that short track success into 2023. 

Bristol Dirt 

As stated above, for the third straight season, NASCAR heads to Bristol for dirt racing on the steeply banked, half-mile bull ring. If you just balked at the words “dirt racing,” no, that wasn’t a typo, the people at Bristol Motor Speedway have thrown down multiple layers of clay and dirt on the concrete of Bristol and turned this venue in a dirt track. 

If your next question about potential modifications to the cars, to make them more capable of driving on dirt… there are none. In fact, the only modifications to expect are what we’ve already seen at Phoenix and Richmond with the new version Generation Seven vehicle. Thus, there is a school of thought that Bristol-Dirt is just a slower version of Bristol and not a real dirt race. If that’s the case, then we need to go right back to the well with HMS drivers as potential lap leaders. 

Furthermore, the limited data range (two years) is a little noisy thank to the weather and circumstances that surrounded the first iteration of this race. In 2021, the weather was not cooperative whatsoever. Before the Cup Series ever hit the dirt, the rain began to fall and never stopped. So much so that the Trucks Series race (scheduled for that Saturday evening) was put on hiatus and moved to Monday. Sunday, the race continued to fall, and the Cup race was moved to Monday following the Trucks Series event. 

Thus, by the time the Cup Series hit the track late Monday afternoon, they got a track that was severely dried out thanks to the Trucks Series race and the dirt began to hold rubber and was acting like any other hard surface that you would race on. This scenario compared to last year where NASCAR actually got the race surface it desired and the race it wanted. 

This discrepancy in racing surfaces becomes apparent when looking at how the 2021 race played out versus the 2022 race. In 2021, drivers with no real dirt experience excelled as Martin Truex Jr. led 126 laps, Daniel Suarez led 58 laps, and race winner Joey Logano led 61 laps. Meanwhile, all of the drivers with dirt racing in their portfolio, either wrecked out or struggled as the track was not racing like the surface should have. However, fast forward to 2022 and Tyler Reddick led 99 laps, Chase Briscoe led 59 laps, and Kyle Larson led 27 laps. Oddly, Daniel Suarez found his way to the lead again leading 64 laps that Sunday night. With two races and two different types of dirt tracks, perhaps Daniel Suarez just excels at this iteration of Bristol and missed his calling as a dirt racer — something he definitely didn’t have access to when cutting his racing chops in Monterrey, Mexico.

Expectations for the Food City Dirt Race

In year three of this experiment, track officials should know exactly what they need to do in order for Easter Sunday’s race to look more like last year then the 2021 version. However, the dirt is at the mercy of the weather and the early outlook for Bristol appears to be wet with rain and cool temperatures forecasted for Wednesday through Sunday. While not a death knell for the quality of racing, just how much falls will certainly impact what we witness Sunday evening. If the rain is light, the precipitation should do nothing more than to help seal the track. However, if the rain turns heavy, then officials could quickly see the track transform into mud. 

Regardless, because of the uniqueness of this race, NASCAR likes to give teams a full and modified practice session to help dial in their setups, and we saw a pretty consistent theme between drivers with strong practice sessions running well in the race on Sunday — coincidentally drivers with dirt backgrounds who finally had a track to match their expectations and setups they dialed in back at the shops before they ever left for Bristol.