BRISTOL, Tenn. – Kyle Busch took a long pause to carefully choose how to describe visibility Friday in the first practice on the dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“So far better, I guess?” the veteran Joe Gibbs Racing driver said. “But second half of that practice, you couldn’t see. You put one car in front of you and you can’t see. Two cars? You definitely can’t see. That’s going to be the toughest part, the dust.”
NASCAR brought the Cup Series back to the Tennessee dirt for a second consecutive year as Speedway Motorsports again transformed its Bristol bullring, this time for a Sunday night race. It will be the first time NASCAR races on Easter in more than 30 years in a scheduling choice by Fox Sports to attract more eyeballs.
Last year at Bristol, in the first Cup Series race on dirt since 1970, the results were mixed. The 30,000 tons of red Tennessee clay used to cover the concrete made the 0.533-mile track a dust bowl that had dangerously poor visibility when combined with the glare of the sun.
“We have to race at night,” said Team Penske’s Joey Logano, the winner of last year’s race. “That was important. Because you just couldn’t even see the cars, and it was unsafe inside the car.”