When it comes to Bristol Motor Speedway, there’s everything up to 2007 and everything after. The 0.533-mile oval underwent a reconfiguration that year, Speedway Motorsports putting in variable banking which created multiple grooves across the short track.
The reconfiguration was not a popular one for fans who had come to love the one groove, bump-and-run style of racing at Bristol. While the consensus opinion is that the Old Bristol was better than the New Bristol, Joey Logano isn’t on board with that line of thinking. He explained Thursday that too often in NASCAR, the “good ol’ days” are seen as better than the present day when it’s not always the case.
“There was a moment where everyone thought that every car needed to be glued to the bottom like the Old Bristol and the only way to pass was to knock them out of the way and that’s what good racing looked like. I don’t know if that’s the case,” Logano said on the Gluckcast. “We have a habit in our sport of always going back and saying, ‘Those were the good ol’ days. Those are better than what we got now.’
“And then we do this cycle, it seems we always go down a direction and somehow, the good ol’ days were better. But I’m not so certain they always were. Some things, maybe sure, I don’t know about everything. And then we circle right back to where we were.”
How would the Next Gen car perform at the Old Bristol?
Logano did admit that the Old Bristol was “great,” though much was different back then. Notably, the Next Gen car didn’t exist which even if around at the Old Bristol, Logano doesn’t believe would have produced an entertaining product.
“Was the Old Bristol great? Sure, well there’s a lot of variables that were different, too, not just the track. The cars are way different. The bump-and-run is a lot different — it’s hard for us to get to the back bumper of someone in front of us now with the way the Next Gen car is, or to get there,” Logano said. “If everyone’s running the same line, you can’t even get to the guy to move him out of the way. Is that better? I don’t know.
“Now, you gotta knock them out of the way where before you kind of lifted them up because they had that shovel front end, and it didn’t take much for us to move them. Now, you gotta knock the piss out of them to do it. When we say make things back the way they used to be, I don’t know if that’s always right.”
NASCAR is making an effort to improve the current on-track product at Bristol. On Sunday, the 750-horsepower short track package will make its debut at Bristol. Goodyear is also bringing a softer tire to the track, hoping the combination of the two will lead to a better show.