Catchfence

BRISTOL IS BACK! BRISTOL IS BACK! Wait a minute, when did it ever go anywhere?

We saw some rather forceful proclamations that the “old” Bristol was back in this recent Volunteer 500, and in a sense the old Bristol was back, but it wasn’t at the expense of the “new” Bristol because “new” and “old” are not terribly applicable descriptions of the place right now. What we saw in this Volunteer 500 is the typical Bristol, the worst race and worst track on the NASCAR tour.

There is a lot of buzzing about how the exchange of cheap shots between Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards has ignited a new NASCAR rivalry and spiced up the competition. This ignores that NASCAR is not in any particular need of a rivalry. What it needs was, ironically, shown in this Bristol race, a race that displayed the graphic lack of competitive depth that has plagued the sport for many years. This race saw a grand total of THREE leaders and only five lead changes; from the start of the weekend there was essentially no prospect of anyone else challenging Busch and Edwards because the competitive depth has not been there.

I often hear gripes about the restrictor-plated New Hampshire race of 2000 and how Jeff Burton led wire to wire – that race was hardly competitive, but with John Andretti passing 22 cars on one green flag run, the top 25 two-by-two Talladega-style for almost the entirety of the opening ten laps, and Bobby Labonte passing Burton for the lead on two separate laps and Burton sidedrafting ahead of him at the stripe both times, there was noticably more competitive depth than in this Bristol race, and the racers raced people clean in that one as opposed to just about any Bristol race.

There was also the need by NASCAR for two quick debris yellows in the final 50 laps; those yellows saved Carl Edwards because Kyle Busch was unstoppable otherwise. Only fifteen cars finished on the lead lap and no one was in any kind of contention for anything; the Lucky Dog gave NASCAR a cheap padding of finishers on the lead lap yet again, making the competitive depth look superficially better than it actually is.

That Edwards had to tag Busch aside to lead illustrated a fundamental flaw with short tracks in general and Bristol in particular – it’s not possible to race people clean there. That so many fans seem to relish cheapshot tactics in racing and see no virtue in racing people clean is an indictment of some in the fanbase, people watching racing for the wrong reasons.

It also illustrated the continuing failure that is the COT – clean air was more important than ever; Edwards was uncatchable once he kicked it into clean air. That was something the COT promised to solve; to say it has made it worse is stating the obvious, and it harkens back to the continuing truth uttered by Busch upon winning the 2007 Southeastern 500 at Bristol with the COT: “This car sucks.”

The same can be said about Bristol.

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So from Bristol the sport goes to Fontana. The California 500 in February saw a few spurts of good racing, much better than we’ve seen at Bristol over the years, but hardly enough to feel good about this coming race. Last September’s LA 500 was substantially different from that, as the leaders fought quite hard and were three abreast for the top on several laps, a sight not seen on a track like this in well over a decade. It was some truly excellent racing and an illustration both of what the sport needs in competitive depth and how much the sport has lost first with John Darby’s bastardization of the “old” car, then with the COT.

Fontana won’t host NASCAR’s Labor Day weekend extravaganza in 2009 as a three-track exchange was worked out. The Dixie 500 at Atlanta will be moved to Labor Day weekend, Fontana moved to early October, and Talladega will run at the start of November. The party line appears to be that the switch will help Fontana and Atlanta draw better attendance, but this ignores the real problems with those two tracks. Their problem is demographic in nature. Atlanta has declined as a NASCAR demographic over the last two decades and was never a particularly good sports demographic to start with with mediocre to poor fan support for the Braves, Thrashers, Hawks, and Falcons. The excuse offered is poor weather on Atlanta’s traditional dates, yet no complaints ever came about weather when Atlanta had only 60,000-fan capacity and managed to sell well in March and early November, plus it would seem to get as brutally hot at Atlanta in September as it does in Fontana, the reason cited to move that race.

Fontana, meanwhile, is in what has been a terrible racing demographic since the days of Ontario Motor Speedway and Riverside International Raceway. As the sport began growing in the 1980s, the fanbase didn’t come out for Ontario and it closed, then stopped coming out for Riverside and it closed. And the fanbase has largely stayed away from Fontana.

The sport needs to get over the myth that southern California is some kind of potential NASCAR fanbase. It never was and can never become one. The real California NASCAR demographic is in the central and northern area, in the environs of Bakersfield and where the old Hanford Speedway once stood. This is where a true superspeedway is needed, one along the lines of Talladega. If Fontana were converted to a plate track as promoter Gillian Zucker has suggested, it wouid at least be a worthwhile track to race on but likely would not solve the reality that southern California is a poor racing demographic.

If Bristol ignited a rivalry, Fontana needs to ignite genuine competitive depth for the sport.