Bristol Dirt Review, Return of North Wilkesboro, and Talladega Preview | Chasing The Cup S1:E12

In this episode of Chasing the Cup, the host Phil England discusses the races at Bristol Dirt and the return of North Wilkesboro. He goes over the results, the race conditions, and some incidents that occurred. He also previews the upcoming races at Talladega. Additionally, he shares news about sponsorships, partnerships, and sad news about the death of Randy Pemberton. Finally, he gives his pick for the Xfinity race at Talladega. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Chasing the Cup. I'm your host, Phil England, and in this episode, I'm going to be revealing the races from Bristol Dirt and I'm going to give the details about the return of North Wilkesboro. I'll also go over the news, and I'm going to preview this weekend's races at Talladega. But first, let's take a look at the results from Bristol Dirt. Kyle Busch snaps a 25-win streak and ties Richard Petty for 18 consecutive seasons with a victory by getting the win at Bristol. Tyler Riddick comes up short after being involved in a last corner incident with Chase Briscoe. Joey Logano finishes third. Kyle Larson finished fourth. Ryan Bellini finished fifth. Alex Bowman finished sixth. Christopher Bell finished seventh. Chase Elliott, who had that running with Cody Ware, finished eighth. Michael McDowell has a good run and finishes ninth. And Ty Dillon, who was a standout in his heat race, rounds out the top ten. And Chase Briscoe, who was involved in that last corner incident, ends up finishing 22nd. So, what a race. It was a great race. You had cars going three and four wide. Some good passing opportunities. Although it was pretty hard to pass because of the dirt. You could pass pretty easily on the concrete surface. It was pretty hard to pass out there when the track was changing. But the drivers physically had to try different things like pulling off slide jobs. And you could go three and four wide without wrecking each other. Of course, there were times that they did wreck each other. But most of the time, they could go three and four wide and not wreck each other. Meanwhile, if you tried going three wide on normal Bristol, you'd probably cause a 20-car pileup on the back street. And then, we gotta talk about that finish. If you saw my video, you saw that Chase Briscoe was battling with Tyler Reddick. And Chase Briscoe went in deep into turn three. And Chase Briscoe lost it and got into Tyler Reddick. And that sent them both spinning. Tyler Reddick was able to pull a 360 and keep going. But at a slow pace, and of course, Kyle Busch was going at speed and passed him on the front straightaway to get the victory. Tyler Reddick was very, very close to getting his first career win. And if it wasn't for Chase Briscoe, he would have gotten it. And after the checkered flag flew, Reddick and Briscoe met each other on Pit Road. And they settled it like men, not children. They just shook their hands, talked a little bit, and went their separate ways. No harm, no foul. And although I do like a good fight every once in a while, it's good to see gentlemen be gentlemen. But certainly, someone that was not a gentleman was Cody Ware, who came across Chase Elliott's nose and caused a four-car incident. And of course, I was listening to Chase Elliott's radio, and he was mad because he was like, who's that idiot in the 51? and Eddie Hunt says, Cody Ware. And Chase Elliott says, I'm gonna beat him. And then Eddie comes on the radio and says, well, he's beating you right now. And then I decided to tell Cody Ware that he's number one, as he came by in turn four. And it was totally uncalled for. It was Cody's fault. He was the one that washed up in front of Chase Elliott. He's the one that started it. And he's the one deciding that he wants to be mad because he thinks Chase Elliott wrecked him when he clearly didn't. And so overall, this race was awesome. I've been going to Bristol races since 2010 with my dad and my family. I went with my cousins for both Saturday and Sunday, and it was a really great race. There were some red flags because of some rain, but unlike concrete Bristol, they can get it dry pretty easily because all they need to do is just pack the rain down in. Just get the packer cars and send them around the track. And basically, since the cars are acting like packer cars during the race, they can keep the green flag going while it's sprinkling. And as I know, it was sprinkling as they were racing. There were times that it was dry, and then there were some times of sprinkles. But when the rain got really hard, NASCAR would throw the red flag because the race would get too wet. And this would usually be under caution when cars aren't at speed. And NASCAR tried all that they can to make sure all 250 laps were complete. Although I have two gripes with NASCAR officiating, as well as other people have gripes with the same thing. And I noticed with the beginning of the race when three of the four historic Haas cars who had different ventilation systems than Chase Briscoe, they started overheating. And that forced a few of them to come down the pit road and clean the mud off. And then NASCAR decided to throw the yellow flag to make a mandatory pit stop to clean the grills off, which in my opinion is just ridiculous. And then you got the confusion with the rules after the end of stage two when it started pouring the rain for the first time. And Kyle Busch was going to cycle out as the leader, but Chase Briscoe was displayed as the leader instead of Kyle Busch. And that was because since the race was not restarted yet, everyone was not cycled out. So that meant if the race was rained out, Chase Briscoe was the winner. But NASCAR wanted to make it a non-issue by drawing the track up, get it all packed up, and then send the cars back onto the track. But besides all that, Sunday's race was great. Probably the best one I've seen at Bristol in person. Maybe slightly above last year's night race. Of course the night race had that electric feeling in the air, and the racing itself was good for Bristol standards. And then you got the rivalry between Harvick and Elliott. But in my opinion, the racing itself on Sunday was better, and the finish was better. So I've had very positive things to say about this race. In my opinion, this shows that NASCAR does have a future on dirt, whether at Bristol or somewhere else. We'll just have to see what happens with the 2023 schedule because they didn't announce anything on Sunday like they did last year. Next, here are the results for the truck race. Ben Rhodes gets his first win of the season, followed by Carson Hosavar, who comes up short after Ben Rhodes pulled off the side job. John Hunter Nemechek had a desperately needed good run and finished third. Parker Toigerman had a great run, as he usually does, with his local team at Bristol and finished fourth. Christian Eckes comes up in fifth. Joey Logano finished sixth. Chase Elliott finished seventh. Grant Anfinger finished eighth. Matt Creston finished ninth, and Zane Smith rounds out the top ten. And this was also a great race, too. The trucks could go three and four wide, but it was somewhat tame for a truck race. Usually at Bristol, there would be like ten, fifteen car pileups, but on the dirt, because you could pass better three and four wide, it makes for some really good racing. And of course, Stork Friesen was probably the fastest out there, but ends up in eleventh, because although you could pass, it was very hard to pass. And the track position was key. That's why people like Hayley Giegen, Mike Marler, Harrison Burton, and Buddy Kofoid finished where they were, because they couldn't make that track position up, because it was very hard to pass. And Buddy Kofoid really showed that he had his talent to run in NASCAR. I think Buddy Kofoid has a future in this sport, if he wants to take it. He may want to go and become part of the truck series with another team this year, maybe at Knoxville. I'd say he probably will want to go to Knoxville, if Kyle Busch wants to do that. Harrison Burton was basically a no-show. Hayley Giegen was making her way through. She had her boyfriend coaching her, because I was listening to her. And she had that track position, but after she wrecked in practice, her backup truck was not as good as her primary, because her primary, as she said in her vlog, was built specifically for dirt. And instead of racing that truck, she had to go to a backup after wrecking it, all because she got in that fluff, as Clint Boyer calls it, and hit the wall. And you could tell she didn't have the same speed as she did on Friday, because on a restart, she was 12th, because after stage 2, a bunch of the leaders came in, and they just straight up passed her, going 3 and 4 wide. So overall, this was a great race. It had a pretty good finish, not as good as the cup finish, because the cup finish will probably go down as one of the most incredible finishes in NASCAR history. Although it's eerily similar to the clash last year, in my opinion, this was even crazier than that, because this happened during a points race, and it was even closer, because Tyler Reddick could've ended up winning if he got up to speed faster, and he would've probably beaten Kyle Busch barely. So overall, both races were awesome. And hopefully, later this year, the truck series, when they go back to Knoxville, hopefully that race is not a wreckfest. Hopefully it won't be, it might be. It's according to how they prep the track, and how the cars are set up. So with Bristol out of the way, let's talk about some exciting news about one of NASCAR's legacy tracks. After years of petitions from local leaders, fans, and people inside the sport, like Junior Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., SMI finally announced that North Wilkesboro will be finally coming back, as part of a series of races called Race Track Revival, held by XR, which is a dirt racing sanctioning body, in both the whole month of August, and the whole month of October. And although XR usually doesn't do races on asphalt, they're gonna make an exception for the month of August, and run on North Wilkesboro's old, worn out asphalt surface, beginning with the XR Hornets. And then, they'll also hold events for Zebra late models, street stocks, pro late models, limited late models, open wheel modified, and late model stocks. So there's gonna be a whole plethora of different types of stock car racing, running on the asphalt at Wilkesboro in August. And then in October, the old Wilkesboro surface will be ground up, in preparation for a repave in 2023. But before, they'll race on North Wilkesboro's original dirt surface, as it was before the modern era. And on the dirt surface, they'll run Hornets, Zebra late models, street stocks, 602 crate late models, open wheel modified, 604 crate late models, 410 sprint cars, big block modified, XR stock cars, and XR late models. Apparently, XR is open to having more sanctioning bodies join these events in August and October, if they wish to. And, they may be teasing, because there may be some other sanctioning bodies that might join. I know in the Southeast, you got the Cars Tour, they may want to be part of that, ARCA and CERA, maybe NASCAR wants to get into this, who knows? And then after the asphalt and dirt races in 2022, they'll repave the track, and it should be ready for a grand opening in 2024, but there's no events that have been announced for 2024. Although, Marcus Smith has talked about having the NASCAR Truck Series go to Wilkesboro in 2024, but currently, Marcus Smith has also said that he does not expect HEP or XFINITY to go. In my opinion, although nothing official about the Top 3 National Series has been announced, this is a huge win for fans of North Wilkesboro. Not only are you getting racing back, but you're basically getting a major series on dirt to come. Of course, it's nothing like the World of Outlaws, but it's still a major touring series, because these guys, of course, did the Bristol Dirt Nationals both last year and this year. And if they put dirt back on Bristol in 2023, then they'll probably do it again. In my opinion, this is helping toward North Wilkesboro's future, as hopefully returning as a mainstay to NASCAR's schedule, whether it be the Truck Series, XFINITY Series, Cup Series, ARCA, or just the Advanced Auto Parts Weekly Series, if that's all they can do. But currently, this is helping North Wilkesboro go in the right direction to hopefully getting maybe one day XFINITY and Cup, although let's not get our hopes too high here for getting those two series in, because North Wilkesboro can only fit around 40,000, and maybe even less than that, because this track is basically in the middle of nowhere in Northwest North Carolina. So I'd say it's not impossible to get Cup back to North Wilkesboro, especially since SMI owns the track. Although it may not be likely, I'd say SMI will push for Wilkesboro to get a Cup date once it's ready for Cup. I'd say NASCAR will happily put it on the schedule once it's ready for Cup, but that's too far in the future, and we only need to see what happens in the near future with the XR races, and then maybe trucks, and any other series in 2024 before we can even consider XFINITY and Cup. Because, for example, let's take a look at Rockingham back in 2012 and 2013, when Rockingham came back to the Truck Series schedule for the first time since the 2000s. Because the track was mostly run down, probably because of poor management, a lot of people complained about the condition of the track, and that scared many people away, and many people did not come to these truck races. Clearly, Rockingham was not ready, and it didn't have the management team to hold those races. That led to Rockingham's previous owners to go bankrupt before another group bought it recently and is working with the car store to have a date. But due to the worn out surface and the tire shortage because of the COVID pandemic, they haven't been able to create a hard enough compound for Rockingham's surface, and so they got part of that money that North Wilkesboro and Charlotte got to repave the surface and light up the track, as well as work on their short track called The Little Rock next door. So if you want North Wilkesboro to survive in the long term, you need to show up to these XR events in August and October. I'm not sure if we can all get it to sell out because it's not a huge series, but it's important that these fans show up. Because if they don't, then that's not going to be good for the long term stability of North Wilkesboro as a track. And it may once again die if no one shows up. And so if you truly do support North Wilkesboro, like local leaders in North Wilkesboro, or drivers and owners like the late Junior Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., then you need to show up and support the track. Because if you don't, then North Wilkesboro will probably not have a future. So I'll put a link in the description where you can buy the tickets because they went on sale today and if you want to go race at Wilkesboro because you're a driver, then you can click the link and enter the race. I wouldn't be surprised if some legends or current cup drivers enter the race if it doesn't interfere with their schedule. Kind of like how they did for the Bristol Dirt Race or with the US Short Track Nationals back in 2017 when Bubba Wallace, I believe, had a week off because he was recently let go from Roush and he was able to run a super late model at Bristol that weekend. And win the race. So probably one big draw for these events will be if any Cup X Fendi or track guys and gals as well as legends like Dale Earnhardt Jr. decide that they want to come out of retirement once again and race at those events. I know Dale Earnhardt Jr. raced at Martinsville in April, so I'd say he'll be open to running in August in a series like the Late Model Stocks as well as some of his drivers like Josh Berry who won the Advanced Auto Parts Series Championship in 2020. So as we get closer to the time for both the pavement events and dirt events, keep an eye on the entry list because there may be some big names that may try to qualify for the features. So with North Wilkesboro out of the way, let's get to the rest of the news. Pacific Office Automotive has announced that it will be the title sponsor for the X Fendi race at Portland International Raceway on June 3rd through 4th, 2022. And the race will be called the Pacific Office Automation 147. Logitech G has partnered with Denny Hamlin and becomes an official 2311 Racing Team Partner. Bella Walz's driver suit will feature the Logitech G logo. It will also appear on Hamlin's sleeve of his suit. It will also be on the logo of the 23 for select races as well as a full Logitech paint scheme for 10 races during the eNASCAR iRacing Series. As for the Bristol Dirt Race TV readings, Fox earned 4.007 million viewers for Sunday night's race, which is the most watched NASCAR event of any kind at Bristol Motor Speedway since spring of 2016, a race that I was at when Carl Edwards got his final Bristol win. The top five markets for that race were Greensboro, Charlotte, Hartford, Jacksonville, and Norfolk. And according to Amster, NASCAR is now up 17% from last year. Rocky will be partnering with Track House Racing in the Cup Series this year. Mack Tinseth has completed the Boston Marathon with a time of 3 hours, 1 minute, and 40 seconds, beating Jimmy Johnson by a couple of minutes. Wendy's will be sponsoring Noah Grexson's number 62 for Beard Motorsports this weekend at Talladega. Alexander Skarsgård will be the Grand Marshal for the Cup Race at Talladega. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be in the booth for Cup Race this weekend at Talladega. This will be the first time that Dale Jr. has worked for Fox since 2017, because usually he's been with NBC. But I guess since Fox and NBC have been both broadcasting USFL games, I guess another part of that partnership will be with Jr. going to Fox this weekend. I know Jr. has been previously open to that, because he wanted to do like a transitional race where he would be in the Fox booth for Sonoma to promote NBC's side of the season. Larry McReynolds will be coming out of retirement this weekend to Crew Chief Jeffrey Earnhardt at Talladega. This will be the first time that Larry McReynolds has crew chiefed since he retired from Richard Childress Racing after crew chiefing Mike Skinner after swapping crew chiefs with Dale Earnhardt in late 1998. So both the Daytona 500 winning crew chief and the grandson of the Daytona 500 winner will be paired together. Clint Boyer will be piloting Navy Allison's iconic number 28 during a ceremonial lap at Talladega prior to this weekend's race as part of being inducted into the Talladega Walk of Fame. Jeff Gordon has said that he is interested in racing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but is uncertain that he'll make the Cubs series start before then. Chandler Smith will be competing in three Xfinity races for Sam Hunt Racing, first this weekend at Talladega, as well as Dover and Homestead. NASCAR and Sport Raider have announced a multi-year integrity sponsorship. Raildyne has partnered with Coral Joy and Spire Mars Sports for the Cup Race at Dover. And finally, I'm going to end off with some sad news. Randy Pemberton died on Friday at the age of 62. He was well known as a TV personality in the 80s and 90s and is known for hosting inside Winston Cup Racing. So my thoughts are with his family and I hope they get through this hard time. And that's it for this week's news. Now it's time to preview this weekend's races at Talladega. No truck race this weekend, so we're going to get started with the Xfinity series, which is the AC Pro 300. The race will be 113 laps and just above 300 miles, with an exact distance of 300.58 miles. The race will be at 4pm Eastern Time and it'll be on Big Fox instead of FS1 this time, as well as MRN on the radio. And so for my pick, it's a Super Speedway and it's an Xfinity race. You have to go with a college driver, so I'm going to go with, of course, AJ Allmendinger. AJ Allmendinger was very close to getting the win at Daytona in February, but I think this time he'll get the win at Talladega, especially since he's with the most dominant team on Super Speedways in that series. He'll probably get a lot of help from Hemrick and Castle. And finally, we have the Cup race, which is of course the GEICO 500. The race will be 188 laps and 500 miles. And the race will be at 3pm Eastern Time on Fox and MRN. So both series are on network TV. So now let's take a look at the weather for Talladega. It'll be sunny with a high of 84 degrees, with winds southeast at 5 to 10 miles per hour with a 5% chance of rain. So it'll be very sunny, but it'll probably be very warm. So make sure you wear some sunscreen while sitting in the green stand or standing around in the infield if you got the infield admission instead of the green stand admission. And so for my pick, because it's Talladega, I'm going to go with Ryan Blaney. Ryan Blaney has been one of the best plate racers in NASCAR currently. He's gotten a couple wins at Talladega, although barely. But I think he'll win this weekend because he's both in a Ford and he's been one of the best plate racers of this generation. And so that's it for this week's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe for more. If you're going out to Talladega this weekend, I hope you have a good time. And if you're not, have a good time wherever you are. I'll see you next week.