Bristol Motor Speedway

Bristol Motor Speedway, formerly known as Bristol International Raceway and Bristol Raceway, is a NASCAR short track venue located in Bristol, Tennessee. Constructed in 1960, it held its first NASCAR race on July 30, 1961. Despite its short length, Bristol is among the most popular tracks on the NASCAR schedule because of its distinct features, which include extraordinarily steep banking, an all concrete surface, two pit roads, and stadium-like seating. It has also been named one of the loudest NASCAR tracks.

Overview
Bristol Motor Speedway is the fourth largest sports venue in America and the eighth largest in the world, housing up to 160,000 people. The track is so short that speeds here are far lower than is typical on most NASCAR oval tracks, but they are very fast compared to other short tracks due to the high banking. These features make for a considerable amount of "paint swapping" at the NASCAR races where the initial starting grid of 43 vehicles in the Cup Series, 40 in the Xfinity Series, and 36 in the Truck Series, extends almost halfway around the track, meaning that slower qualifiers begin the race almost half a lap down. The congestion inherent in this facility and the power of the cars and trucks has been likened to "flying fighter jets in a gymnasium" (or a "washing machine" or a "toilet"). The track is one that tends to be either loved or hated by the fans and the drivers. Purists who grew up driving or attending races at older short tracks located at fairgrounds and similar places tend to love Bristol, while those raised on superspeedway racing tend to chafe at the lower speeds.

Many of the fans come from the East Tennessee area, but thousands more come from all parts of the country to experience Bristol's unique brand of racing. Even in the off-season, the complex attracts fans during the Christmas season by facilitating a miles-long holiday lights display that culminates with a lap on the actual speedway track itself.



Track history
Bristol Motor Speedway could very easily have opened in 1961 under a different name. The first proposed site for the speedway was in Piney Flats, Tennessee, but, according to Carl Moore, who built the track along with Larry Carrier and R. G. Pope, the idea met local opposition. So the track that could have been called Piney Flats International Speedway was built 5 miles (8 km) up the road on U.S. Highway 11-E in Bristol. The land upon which Bristol Motor Speedway is built was formerly part of Gray's Dairy, at one point one of the largest dairies in the eastern half of the United States. Larry Carrier and Carl Moore traveled to Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1960 to watch a race and it was then that they decided to build a speedway in northeast Tennessee. However, they wanted a smaller model of CMS, something with a more intimate setting and opted to erect a 0.5 mile (0.8 km) facility instead of mirroring the 1.5 mile (2.4 km) track in Charlotte.

Work began on what was then called Bristol International Speedway in 1960 and it took approximately one year to finish. Carrier, Moore and Pope scratched many ideas for the track on envelopes and brown paper bags.

Purchase of the land on which BMS now sits, as well as initial construction of the track, cost approximately $600,000. The entire layout for BMS covered 100 acre and provided parking for more than 12,000 cars. The track itself was a perfect .5 mi, measuring 60 ft wide on the straightaways, 75 ft wide in the turns, and the turns were banked at 22 degrees. Seating capacity for the very first NASCAR race at BMS – held on July 30, 1961 – was 18,000. Prior to this race the speedway hosted weekly races. The first driver on the track for practice on July 27, 1961 was Tiny Lund in his Pontiac. The second driver out was David Pearson. Fred Lorenzen won the pole for the first race at BMS with a speed of 79.225 mi/h. Atlanta's Jack Smith won the inaugural event – the Volunteer 500 – at BMS. However, Smith wasn't in the driver's seat of the Pontiac when the race ended. Smith drove the first 290 laps then had to have Johnny Allen, also of Atlanta, take over as his relief driver. The two shared the $3,225 purse. The total purse for the race was $16,625. Country music star Brenda Lee, who was 17 at the time, sang the national anthem for the first race at BMS. A total of 42 cars started the first race at BMS but only 19 finished.

In the fall of 1969 BMS was reshaped and re-measured. The turns were banked at 36 degrees and it became a 0.533 mi oval.

The speedway was sold after the 1976 season to Lanny Hester and Gary Baker. In the spring of 1978 the track name was changed to Bristol International Raceway. In August of that year, the first night race was held on the oval, one that would become one of the most popular and highly anticipated events on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series calendar.

On April 1, 1982, Lanny Hester sold his half of the speedway to Warner Hodgdon. On July 6, 1983, Hodgdon completed a 100 percent purchase of Bristol Motor Speedway, as well as Nashville Speedway, in a buy-sell agreement with Baker. Hodgdon named Larry Carrier as the track's general manager. On January 11, 1985, Hodgdon filed for bankruptcy. Afterwards, Larry Carrier formally took possession of the speedway and covered all outstanding debts.

In 1992, the speedway abandoned the asphalt surface that it had used since its inception, switching to the concrete surface it is now famous for.

On January 22, 1996, Larry Carrier sold the speedway to Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports, Inc. (SMI), at a purchase price of $26 million. At the time of the sale, the facility seated 71,000. On May 28 of the same year, the track's name was officially changed to Bristol Motor Speedway. By August, 15,000 seats had been added bringing the seating capacity to 86,000.

BMS continued to grow and by April 1997 was the largest sports arena in Tennessee and one of the largest in the country, seating 118,000. The speedway also boasted 22 new skyboxes. For the August 1998 Goody's 500 the speedway featured more than 131,000 grandstand seats and 100 skyboxes. Improvements to the speedway since Smith took possession are in excess of $50 million. Under Smith's ownership, all seating sections have been renamed for past race winners and NASCAR champions.

The capacity for the Food City 500 in March 2000 was 147,000 as the Kulwicki Terrace and Kulwicki Tower were completed. Both were named after NASCAR star Alan Kulwicki, who was the reigning Cup Series champion when he died in a plane crash in 1993 while on his way to the spring race at Bristol, which he won the previous year. As a tribute to retiring star Darrell Waltrip, the entire Turn 3 and 4 sections were renamed in his honor in 2000, including a section of seats in Turn 4 near the start-finish line marked as alcohol free. (Waltrip refused to drive for a team in 1987 because its sponsor was associated with alcoholic beverages.) Sections were also named in honor of the Allison family and David Pearson as part of the renaming of grandstands.

In 2000 and again in 2001, the track was temporarily converted to a dirt track to host the World of Outlaws' Channellock Challenge. The conversion involved moving 8000 cuft of red clay onto the track's surface. 700 cuyd of sawdust were laid down first to cover the paved surface. The track was widened by 12 ft to 14 ft and the banking was reduced from 36° to somewhere between 22° to 24°. While the races proved to be very popular, the process of installing and removing a temporary surface required 14,000 truckloads of material to be shipped in and out of the track which wore heavily on the roads around the track.

As has been the case since the SMI purchase of BMS, improvements continued in and around the Speedway in 2002. The season saw the addition of a long-awaited infield pedestrian tunnel, allowing access into and out of the infield during on-track activity. Also in 2002, a new building was constructed in the infield to house driver meetings. That same year also witnessed the christening of a new BMS Victory Lane atop the newly constructed building. Kurt Busch won the 2002 Food City 500 on March 24 and became the first Cup winner in the new BMS winner's circle. Additional improvements in 2002 included new scoreboards located on the facing of the suites in Turns 2 and 3. On Monday, August 26, 2002, work began on the most ambitious construction project since SMI's purchase of BMS in 1996. The entire backstretch, including the Speedway's last remaining concrete seats, was demolished. The new backstretch increased the venue’s seating capacity to more than 160,000. The new backstretch includes three levels of seating and is topped with 52 luxury skybox suites. These seats are also named for leading NASCAR figures, with Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Junior Johnson each having a section of the new seats named for them; Dale Earnhardt was given a section on top in his memory.

A 5,000 seat section of the turn 1 and 2 grandstand, on top of the Alan Kulwicki Grandstand, is now named the Rusty Wallace Tower. Additional improvements included a scoring pylon with a four-sided video screen akin to those in sports arenas hanging from their ceilings.

Battle at Bristol
In 2005, track owner Bruton Smith made a public offer of $20 million apiece to the University of Tennessee (UT) and Virginia Tech to schedule a non-conference college football game between the powerhouse Vols and Hokies' programs. Smith suggested that grass could be grown in the infield section of the racetrack. Virginia Tech showed much interest and nearly agreed to the proposal, but UT, on the other hand, showed little or no interest and in fact avoided the offer which made this possibility ultimately fall by the wayside.

On October 14, 2013, after years of attempts to schedule a game, Virginia Tech, UT, and Bristol Motor Speedway announced plans for the game to be held on Saturday, September 10, 2016. Organizers envision attendance for the non-conference game, dubbed the Battle at Bristol, College Football's Biggest EVER, to draw 150,000 spectators, which would surpass the current NCAA record for highest single-game attendance of 115,109. Bristol Motor Speedway's location near the Virginia/Tennessee state line places the game about 125 miles (205 km) from the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia and about 110 miles (177 km) from the UT campus in Knoxville.

Other uses of Bristol Motor Speedway
In 1961, the track hosted a National Football League preseason game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins.

The 2006 Disney-Pixar film Cars used Bristol Motor Speedway as the inspiration behind the Motor Speedway of the South, featured in the film's opening scene. Cars director and NASCAR fan John Lasseter made the fictional Motor Speedway of the South a 1-mile track, compared with Bristol's half-mile to make the straightaways little longer for some of the scenes and allow for fans in the infield.

Bristol Motor Speedway every year from late November till the first week in January hosts "Speedway in Lights," a collection of christmas light displays with the money going to various charities. It also hosts a skating rink and a slide.

Bristol Motor Speedway is a true amphitheatre, being completely enclosed by seating, and holds 165,000 people, making it the largest in the world. In comparison, the Roman Colosseum's seating capacity was 50,000 people and the Circus Maximus, a hippodrome, could accommodate an estimated 150,000 spectators.