{"id":605045,"date":"2026-04-15T05:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T05:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/605045\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T05:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T05:44:08","slug":"nascar-insider-shuts-down-bristol-attendance-criticisms-amid-calls-for-return-to-nashville-fairgrounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/605045\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insider shuts down Bristol attendance criticisms amid calls for return to Nashville Fairgrounds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A NASCAR insider doesn\u2019t want to hear about the lack of attendance for the Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway. On this week\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NGYtBjztmdE\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Door Bumper Clear<\/a>, Freddie Kraft called out the fans for telling him about Bristol\u2019s attendance and saying NASCAR needs to go back to the Nashville Fairgrounds. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t at me about the attendance at Bristol while you\u2019re telling me we need to go to Nashville,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cJust because Bristol maybe looks empty on television, but half a full Bristol is still 75,000 people. That\u2019s way more than we\u2019re going to have when we go to Gateway, Nashville, I would assume. That\u2019s a great crowd in most sense of the word. It just doesn\u2019t look great on TV because the place is so huge, and it\u2019s built to hold 150,000 people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut all these people that are coming and going, \u2018Look at this terrible crowd at Bristol. Let\u2019s go to Nashville.\u2019 Nashville? It probably holds a third of that. But it\u2019s like the common sense isn\u2019t so common all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More on NASCAR at Bristol and Nashville<\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The Cup Series began having races at Nashville Superspeedway in 2021, and the track can hold as many as 30,000. It\u2019s located in Lebanon, Tennessee, 25 miles east of downtown Nashville. <\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/sports\/nascar\/nascar-attendance-bristol-food-city-500-empty-seats\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sunday\u2019s race drew around 70,000 fans<\/a>, leading to backlash from fans because of the empty seats. <\/p>\n<p>The 70,000 fans who were there saw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/pro\/news\/ty-gibbs-outduels-ryan-blaney-at-bristol-wins-first-career-nascar-cup-race\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ty Gibbs win the first Cup race<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A NASCAR insider doesn\u2019t want to hear about the lack of attendance for the Cup Series race at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-605045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}