After one other attention-grabbing weekend, Bristol Motor Speedway‘s grime experiment will proceed for an additional season. On Tuesday, monitor president and basic supervisor Jerry Caldwell confirmed the NASCAR Cup Collection‘ Meals Metropolis Filth Race will return for 2023.
Introduced in 2021 for the Cup and Tenting World Truck Collection, the grime weekend has drawn blended reception from followers and media, with detractors arguing the half-mile quick monitor is simply too iconic with two asphalt rounds and that NASCAR ought to go to an precise grime monitor if it wished to run such races. Each editions had been additionally marred by weird circumstances: the 2021 weekend was plagued by rain earlier than the Cup event noticed double-file restarts be shifted to a single line as a consequence of visibility issues as grime kicked up into drivers’ windshields (itself a hot-button matter as these like grime star and reigning Cup champion Kyle Larson denounced their usage); the 2022 Cup race suffered from rain, mud, and a scoring controversy.
Regardless of its points, each races loved excessive ticket gross sales and tv scores. Saturday’s Truck race was the highest-viewed Bristol race in collection historical past whereas the mum or dad CUp Collection had 4.007 million viewers, probably the most at Bristol since 2016. The Bristol Filth Nationals, that includes precise grime automobiles, has additionally been a well-liked occasion.
“I’m so grateful for our house owners, Bruton and Marcus Smith, for permitting our Bristol Motor Speedway workforce to placed on a tremendous Easter celebration and NASCAR race weekend that exceeded our expectations with robust ticket gross sales and primetime viewership on FOX,” Caldwell said. “Bristol Motor Speedway will put together for a spring night time race on grime in 2023, giving the followers two nice NASCAR reveals on completely different surfaces. The dates for our NASCAR occasions won’t be accessible till later this yr. To ensure the very best seats for extra superb grime racing subsequent yr, company might contact the ticket workplace or go to our web site at BristolMotorSpeedway.com to resume their tickets immediately.”
Sunday’s Meals Metropolis Filth Race ended with a dramatic end through which Chase Briscoe and Tyler Reddick made contact whereas preventing for the win, which allowed Kyle Busch to steal the victory. The day past’s Pinty’s Truck Race on Filth noticed Ben Rhodes cross Carson Hocevar for the win with 4 laps to go.
