Building Bristol Dirt: Transforming 'The Last Great Colosseum' | NASCAR

[Music] you really look back to the early stages of nascar the roots of our sport [Music] the group here at bristol are always challenging us do something bigger and better and more for the race fans we've been talking about the dirt for probably four or five years just off and on once it came to fruition last year it was uh it was almost like oh here we go now it's real now we really gotta figure out how to make this happen [Music] the pennzoil world of outlaws are back at the fastest dirt half mile of america the bristol motor speedway you really go back to what we tried in 2000 and 2001 here that went really well we knew we could do it but it had never been tried to this level with nascar we watched a lot of video from those races to learn to see what happened and we've taken that information and you know put it into practice actually we wanted to take care of the concrete make sure that we were keeping it protected so we laid a layer of sawdust by putting the dirt on top of it that sawdust actually gives us a layer that will one act as a friction base that keeps it from slipping off or the dirt slipping off the concrete and also protect the concrete from getting stained or or destroyed so after the sawdust is placed we started bringing dirt in we used dirt from the 2000 2001 track we had storage since 2000 2001 we utilized that dirt to start that base layer and from that point we started searching for dirt we searched 20 different sites i'm not a dirt expert but i've learned a lot more about it than i never wanted to second layer actually is less than a half a mile from here if you step outside the speedway you can see the hillside we took off and then the third location was in bluff city which is about 10 minutes up the road we faced some definite weather challenges it rained for six days in a row and we'd work on a sunday and then start raining on monday and we'd work again on the next saturday for a day we had real real short windows we had dry enough weather to work so we ended up bringing in 2 300 truckloads which is roughly 23 000 cubic yards of dirt the banking on the track we're at 19 degrees in the turns front stretch and back stretcher is six degrees we're going through several thousand gallons of water you know to keep moisture in the track definitely want to shout our team that we've had here the construction team has been fantastic the gentleman that we've hired to help us with the track prep mike van garden has been fantastic main goal is make sure we have the right amount of moisture at all spots of the racetrack make sure the track is smooth try to make it hold together make it racy so it's not one lane it's really going to be dependent on that day race on sunday what the sun's doing what the moisture is doing and how we're prepping the track and what we need to do when we clip or roll or till and what the process looks like to be able to maintain moisture as long as possible in the track it's never gonna be perfect every time but we try to make it so we don't have a lot of dust but we have a lot of good racing the drivers have gave us great feedback all the drivers from the cub guys that will be in and all the the local guys and the people that came to run this dirt nationals has been nothing but positive we've not heard any negatives about the track at all it's definitely cool really really fast so a lot of fun just wide open you put gravel on bristol put dirt on the wrist don't matter man it's bristol's bristol i just feel bad for people that have to clean it up because it's going to be a mess just seeing a week of good racing the track holding together positive feedback positive comments and just the hype around the whole thing coming in the next weekend to this point has definitely been satisfying i think the fans will be really into it i know a lot of the competitors are excited about it so yeah hopefully the energy will be big here we all work for the race fans and if the race fans love it and i think they're going to then it's going to be a success i won't be satisfied or even off the pins and needles until the end of next sunday when the checkered flag drops that's when we know we've done what we're supposed to do and got things done

Channel: NASCAR

Views: 128,780

Rating: 4.9425607 out of 5

Keywords: NASCAR, motorsports, racing, stock car, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, chase elliott, fantasy sports, fantasy fastlane, glass case of emotion, ryan blaney, crash, wreck, pileup, pit road, penalty, race track, super speedway, highlight

Id: N1uKRlvyGek

Length: 4min 42sec (282 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/midlohokie73]

They stored dirt for 20 years?

[u/SundayShelter]

I see my camping spot over at Farmer Bob’s in the background! My wedding ring is somewhere underneath that bathhouse.

[u/Nerdybiker540]

Hyped for this.

[u/mcflyfly]

Pumped. Regardless of how this turns out, I love that they’re trying something new.

Props to the people who’ve worked so hard on this.

[u/countrymac_is_badass]

Can they race it if it's raining? Or would it turn into a muddy mess and cause tons of mechanical issues?