Rudy Fugle wants to know NASCAR’s goal for Bristol

The last four trips to Bristol Motor Speedway have put on wildly different races, which have left Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Rudy Fugle wondering about the goal for the short track.

Do NASCAR, the fans, and Goodyear want a race with only three cautions and one driver dominating? Do they want a race where tires shred in 30-40 laps? Do they want to go back to 1995 Bristol?

“Somebody has to put the goal on the wall,” Fugle said during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “What do we want the Bristol race to be? If you don’t know what that goal is, we don’t know what we’re trying to achieve.

“Are the fans wanting one of those two races, or are they wanting 1995? If they’re wanting 1995, it wasn’t either one of those races, in my opinion, either. I was sitting in a grandstand as an 11-year-old kid watching in 1995. It wasn’t like either of those races either. They were going all out. They were just on the bottom and bumping around with the thing and whatever.”

The 1995 Bristol night race delivered a wild finish. Terry Labonte had the lead, but Dale Earnhardt sought to take it in the closing laps. The Intimidator hit Labonte from behind, which sent the No. 5 Chevrolet sliding across the finish line and into the outside wall.

Labonte technically wrecked, but he finished first after sliding across the finish line ahead of Earnhardt. This marked his third win of the season and his first at Bristol since 1984.

This race, as well as many others in that era, made Bristol the hottest ticket in NASCAR. It became nearly impossible for fans to get seats for the Tennessee short track.

This has not been the case since the streak of 55 consecutive sellouts ended in 2010. Fans have still flocked to Bristol Motor Speedway, just in lower numbers.

The action on the track played a role in this streak ending, as did the economy. It also didn’t help that hotels in the area began significantly raising prices to take advantage of travelers.

As Fugle said, NASCAR and SMI made changes to Bristol over the years. They added — and then removed — the progressive banking. They ground the top and then later put dirt on the surface. These changes created interesting races, but they didn’t take the track back to what some view as the peak years.

“If you want 1995, it’s not going to come from Goodyear tire,” Fugle added during his radio appearance. “It’s going to come from cutting up the racetrack and redoing the concrete back to 1995. I don’t even know if the car can produce that kind of race either, but that’s the first step.

“We’ve tried to rework the racetrack every which way we can since 2007, including putting dirt on it and still never made it like 1995. Somebody needs to put the goal on the wall and then we need to get together to try to make Bristol the way somebody wants it to be, the way it used to be, where it used to be the best race on the circuit.”

Fugle doesn’t know the goal for Bristol Motor Speedway, but he also can’t think about it anymore now that both of this season’s trips to the short track are complete. His team, led by William Byron, remains in the hunt for the championship, so his focus must shift to New Hampshire and the other tracks in the Round of 12.

But he will remain curious about Bristol’s future for the time being.