Notes from Tennessee’s Big Show – Reflections on Bristol Yesterday and Today
Story by Geoff Stunkard ~ Photos by John Stunkard
It’s funny how we remember things. There was a time not so long ago (OK, I guess it has been an honest 15 years) when a yearly trip to Bristol International Raceway was as important to me as going to the Nationals at Indy. Living in the Northeast at the time, the IHRA Spring Nationals had a certain magic to it; the stoic old tower, the dense woods lining the pits, the hell-bent locals on the concrete bleachers living large, the sound of horsepower echoing down the little valley, and the unique program of racing IHRA then offered. As the flagship of Larry Carrier’s legacy, the 30-year track was showing its age even then. Sanitation on Saturday night was atrocious, gust-nados would roar in on occasion and rip all the pit-based tents and awning up, and serious flooding was also a problem during the raining spring time.
As the sanctioning body went through its 1990s upheavals (I was working for IHRA by then), it was thought the track would become just another memory like Orange County in California, US 30 in Indiana, and New York National out on Long Island. Instead, Bruton Smith took hold of it and began an immense makeover to create what would become a flagship facility, and Bristol Dragway is now the site of what NHRA terms the Thunder Valley Nationals.
Some critics keep an antagonistic hat on when talking about NHRA, but this column is not for the politically observant today. Instead, what I wanted to do was think of how much things have changed in the racing business in those ensuing years. My son John and I went to the Nationals for a day; at 16, he has gotten the musclecar bug but this was his real experience at being at a big racing event. Since I had work to do for the print media, NHRA’s Anthony Vestal graciously had granted me press access and I bought John a reserved seat ticket; even at this point in the economy, Bristol is well-supported by racing fans. Despite a rough weather forecast, many of the reserved seats for that Friday were sold and his seat was down in the S-T section, over halfway down the track.
Like most large raceplants today, parking was very spread out and we had a bit of a walk to get to the track from our parking spaces, even from the media lot. Perhaps the biggest difference between Bristol today and yesterday is the immense amount of flat space now available at the facility; Smith’s crews moved millions of cubic feet to raise the valley itself up, reangle the racetrack itself, and add more flat space; swamps were filled in, creeks rerouted, and hills shaved away to create terraces for racers and spectator parking. The grandstands are immense, the tower a state-of-the-art monolith, and frankly the view from the stands is excellent (though the large scoreboards make downtrack a little hard to see). It remains as legendary as it ever was with these changes.
The racers, well, the pro racers themselves fill this place UP. As we walk down through the nitro pits, it is not just that there are semis; it is that there are multiple trucks for almost every team. We are a long way from the days of ramp trucks to be sure, but frankly we are a long way from 1994 as well; the amount of support vehicles storage, and sponsor space each team uses today is staggering and expensive. If racing itself is expensive, maintaining the level of support today is also a huge cost to the teams.
In fact, when it comes to pro racing yesterday and today, about the only thing that remains the same (and much to both the NHRA’s and drivers’ credits) is the accessibility to the pits and personalities. As we walked past fans getting pictures with Ashley Force and stopped in to see all-around good guy Clay Millican with no hassle, it dawned on me that if this ever went away, drag racing would lose a huge amount of its sense of identity. Watching fuel teams tear down and rebuild engines that evening was also part of the race experience that makes a big impression on a newcomer, but the driver access trumps all, even if the big names don’t work the ropes like they did back in the day.
The final part of the day was spent up in those stands; the weather threatening both north and south of the racing action had kept some people at home, so for the final session in the event, the kid and I took up a railbird position near the end of the grandstands to shoot photos. Back in the day, the track had been right next to the bleachers; ‘go or blow’ Saturday night IHRA Top Fuel style against that little fence had not been for the faint of heart. I had lamented seeing the change at the time, but it truly is a lot safer now. The crowd was slightly lubricated, but the era of guaranteed fistfights, streakers, and mayhem is gone. It was healthy for the sport to see a lot of families with happy kids cheering the start of funny car action at dusk (and we dodged the rain bullet all the way through the day).
John is 16, and frankly he had a blast. When I asked him if he wanted to leave early to avoid the traffic, he told me he did want to see the end of it all, and asked a lot of questions. He won a Tee Shirt by out-wrenching another kid at the Wyotech training display, got a seriously stout dose of nitro in his system during the pit warm-ups, and got busy taking pictures over the fence and from the stands while I was working. I’ve been around this stuff long enough to be a little numb to it all; the 25.00 cost to get him in (thanks to a 10.00 discount ticket offered by the track) was money well spent, and any day you can do something important and enjoyable for both you and your kid is… priceless…
Here is what John Stunkard captured from a perch on the pitside of the new Bristol Dragway:
Jimbo Fields' Corvette in qualifying.
From the spectator side stands, we see Jeg Coughlin putting a fender out on Larry Morgan.
Spencer Massey had a weekend he would rather forget, as Don Prudhomme's US Tobacco dragster failed to crack the final field.
Fireworks ended the day on Friday this year.
More Pics from Bristol – by Geoff Stunkard
The kid enjoying a day at the races.
Cory Mac was top dog after this Friday evening pass yielded a fat 3.854 in the FRAM dragster. He followed that up with a massive fireball during Sunday's opening frame and went two rounds.
Here is Del Worsham en route to a solid qualifying effort; his win here on Sunday, his second in as many races, propelled him into the second place in points behind Ron Capps.
Erica Enders has not had a lot of success yet in the Jim Cunningham Mustang Pro Stock effort, but the car is very popular among the casual fans.
Robert Hight was a surprising DNQ; this was his first pass and explosion in round one of qualifying.
Points leader Ron Capps and the NAPA crew brought out a new paint scheme for this event.
Tony Schumacher again proved his prowess on the mountain with his second win in as many years in Top Fuel with the US Army machine. He regained the points lead from Antron Brown as well.
Mike Edwards had a dominating weekend, running the fastest run of every session, dominating his opponents in competition (he posted what he termed a "bad red light" with a perfect .000 reaction in round two and a track record 6.633 in the final over Greg Anderson.
Doug Herbert (far lane) made his first start of the 2009 season thanks to help from Food City. Herbert won here multiple times back in the IHRA days, but was out after round one. Meanwhile, Brandon Bernstein took the Budweiser car to round three before meeting up with "The Sarge."
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