- After Easter break weekend, NASCAR will return to Bristol Motor Speedway
- Besides Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell could stand a chance.
- Kyle Busch will have a big chance to revive his dipping career.
While the NASCAR Cup Series paused for the Easter break, a tradition restored in 2022 after a gap of 51 years, the spotlight shifted to the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series last weekend.
Cup drivers, meanwhile, stepped away to recover after seven straight weekends, with Bristol Motor Speedway waiting on the other side, a venue that has handed out rewards and confusion in equal measure.
For instance, who can forget the 2024 Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, which is famously known for extreme tire wear? So much so that the sets faded in under 40 laps. Teams burned through inventory, forcing a balancing act on pit road and on track.
A mix of the concrete surface and a fresh adhesive played a role. The situation grew so acute that NASCAR approved an extra set of tires for each team during the event. The race saw more than 50 lead changes before Denny Hamlin took the win.
Fans soaked in the mess. Since then, NASCAR and Goodyear have tried to recreate that scenario, including using softer compounds, but the same kind of race has not happened. Their aim remains to strike that balance again when racing resumes.
Bristol has stood on the calendar since 1961, yet its gates have opened to more than stock cars in recent years. In 2025, it hosted a Major League Baseball game at Bristol Motor Speedway between the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds. A decade earlier, it turned into a football field for the Battle at Bristol between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Tennessee Volunteers.
NASCAR Cup favorites to watch this weekend
After Chase Elliott’s win at Martinsville, the balance of power has tilted. Through seven races, Toyota has five wins, Chevrolet has one, and Ford has one, courtesy of Ryan Blaney at Phoenix. Toyota holds a 46.7 percentage-point edge, its highest since entering NASCAR in 2007.
Tyler Reddick has put together a run this season, yet Bristol has not been kind to him. At Martinsville, he stayed in the middle, ran near the top 10, and scored in both stages before slipping back to finish the race in P15. Meanwhile, across nine starts at Bristol, he holds an average finish of 19.4, with one top-five result and seven laps led. The next outing will offer him another chance to rewrite that record.
For Denny Hamlin, Bristol has often been a stage where the pieces fall into place. He has four wins there and carries an average finish of 13.5 across 37 starts. Coming off a run at Martinsville where he stacked the highest points, and after a win at Las Vegas, the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing entry has set the pace. Even within his orbit at 23XI Racing, the No. 11 has held the edge. Kevin Harvick has also backed Hamlin to come out on top at Bristol.
Christopher Bell stands in P7 in the standings with 12 points and three top-five finishes. The results show flashes, yet the No. 20 team still searches for a defining run this season. Bristol may offer that opening, given Bell’s run of six straight top-10 finishes there and his status as the most recent winner at the track.
Kyle Larson remains a big part of the Bristol conversation. At Martinsville, he traded paint with Bell and stayed within the sixth-to-15th range before finishing ninth. At Bristol, though, over the past decade, Larson and Hamlin have set the tone, with Larson winning two of the last three races there and leading close to 900 laps in that span.
Bristol might be Kyle Busch’s last real shot at a comeback. But can he pull it off?
Then there is Kyle Busch, whose record at Bristol stands out. He has eight wins at the track and an average finish of 14.5 across 38 starts, though recent runs have dragged those numbers down. His last top-five result there came in 2020, when he started P9 and finished second.
It looks like the Next Gen car has posed a challenge. Plus, his No. 8 team at Richard Childress Racing has not always delivered a package capable of fighting for wins. Some fans have called for a move to Hendrick Motorsports, even suggesting a switch with Alex Bowman. Others point to his final stretch at Joe Gibbs Racing, where results dipped, raising questions that go beyond the car.
However, Busch has shown pace in Truck and O’Reilly Auto Parts outings, which shifts the focus back to the Cup car. He also won three races with RCR in 2023, driving the same model. The answer remains unclear. But what is clear is that Bristol may offer a chance to halt the slide and turn the tide.
