A NASCAR insider doesn’t want to hear about the lack of attendance for the Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway. On this week’s Door Bumper Clear, Freddie Kraft called out the fans for telling him about Bristol’s attendance and saying NASCAR needs to go back to the Nashville Fairgrounds.
“Don’t at me about the attendance at Bristol while you’re telling me we need to go to Nashville,” Kraft said. “Just because Bristol maybe looks empty on television, but half a full Bristol is still 75,000 people. That’s way more than we’re going to have when we go to Gateway, Nashville, I would assume. That’s a great crowd in most sense of the word. It just doesn’t look great on TV because the place is so huge, and it’s built to hold 150,000 people.
“But all these people that are coming and going, ‘Look at this terrible crowd at Bristol. Let’s go to Nashville.’ Nashville? It probably holds a third of that. But it’s like the common sense isn’t so common all the time.”
More on NASCAR at Bristol and Nashville
NASCAR will be in the Nashville area on May 31, but the Cup drivers will be competing at Nashville Superspeedway. What fans have been asking for is for NASCAR to return to Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, as the last Cup race at the track was in 1984.
Nashville Fairgrounds is located in downtown Nashville and holds 15,000 fans. It held at least one Cup Series race from 1958 to 1984, and Richard Petty won nine races at the track.
The Cup Series began having races at Nashville Superspeedway in 2021, and the track can hold as many as 30,000. It’s located in Lebanon, Tennessee, 25 miles east of downtown Nashville.
Bristol Motor Speedway has a lot of history, as it has held two Cup races per year since the track opened in 1961. It was reported that Sunday’s race drew around 70,000 fans, leading to backlash from fans because of the empty seats.
The 70,000 fans who were there saw Ty Gibbs win the first Cup race of his career. He got past Ryan Blaney in overtime for the win and has finished in the top 10 in his last six races.