Why NASCAR drivers love Bristol: ‘Everybody wants to compete in The Last Great Colosseum’
Each time Joey Logano arrives at Bristol, the reigning NASCAR champion crosses over the racetrack.
Walking through the pedestrian tunnel provides an exhilarating view of the famed venue in the Tennessee mountains, but its 28-degree banking can only be summed up by the experience.
Bristol, which hosts the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 2 for a regular-season Major League Baseball game, fits roughly 150,000 spectators. Fans line the stadium-style concourse seeking autographs from their favorite drivers, while the humming noise from the Cup Series’ cars heard on the infield is seemingly louder than any other track.
It was a cooler weekend ahead of Sunday’s Food City 500 — with temperatures as high as the mid-50s under mostly cloudy skies — inside the half-mile racetrack that is home to some of the most thrilling races on the NASCAR circuit.
“It’s the badass factor of what this place is,” Logano said. “You definitely hear the cheers and the boos, they’re much more in-your-face. I like that. It’s cool — it brings a little bit more of the stadium environment that other sports get to enjoy a little more. It’s hard to get that feeling when you’re on a mile-and-a-half racetrack, where you may have more people there than other sporting events, but they’re spread out. Here, they’re right there. You’re gonna hear them all after the race.”
‘You’re speechless for a minute or two’
Daniel Suárez tells his racing friends from Mexico to attend a race at Bristol.
The Monterrey, Mexico, native who became the first foreign-born driver to win a NASCAR national series title feels Bristol is among the best tracks on which he’s raced.
Others just don’t have that strong of a vantage point from every corner of the grandstands, and those in-person views go a long way in bringing fans to motorsports. The quality of racing at Bristol always follows, and there’s nothing like walking down the steep banks.
“Bristol is extremely special to me,” Suárez said. “If not the most, it’s definitely one of the most amazing racetracks that we go to. It’s one of a kind. People very often in Mexico, I’ve got friends who don’t have a lot of money, and they’ve asked me: ‘Hey, if I can only go to one racetrack, which one would that be?’ I always tell them to come here.
“Because this is one of those racetracks that when you walk in and see the cars, you’re speechless for a minute or two. It’s pretty amazing when you see how fast we can go in a very, very small racetrack. It’s an incredible place, and we’re very lucky to race here a couple of times a year.”
‘It’s still massive, compared to 100 yards on a football field’
There isn’t a bad seat in the house at Martinsville, but the scenes from Bristol beat it.
Ryan Blaney always heads up to the Turn Three grandstands during the Xfinity Series races at the track dubbed “The Last Great Colosseum.”
The standout Team Penske driver said he’s always considered Bristol to be among his favorite tracks. A third-generation racer who spent much of his upbringing in High Point, Blaney is very familiar with what makes short tracks like Martinsville special. The 360-degree views at Bristol are an enormous part of what makes this half-mile track unique, and it’s important for NASCAR to have atmospheres like it.
“It does feel like you’re in a giant stadium,” Blaney said. “It’s huge for the sport, and I think people really appreciate getting a whole new perspective. It’s hard to describe it if you haven’t been here, of what you’re going to see and what the vantage point is from any spot on the race track and in the stands. It’s important the sport has it. The only thing that our sport sometimes doesn’t lack, but hurts, is our racetracks are really big.
“You can’t have stands all the way around them, and even if you could, you wouldn’t see the whole racetrack. But here it’s enough where you can see everything. The closest thing you’ll get to a football stadium — and it’s funny, when they did the football game between Tennessee and Virginia Tech, it looked super tiny. It puts it into perspective: Even though this is a half-mile, it’s still massive, compared to 100 yards on a football field.”
‘Everybody wants to compete in The Last Great Colosseum’
This summer’s “MLB Speedway Classic” at Bristol will mark the first major-league baseball game in Tennessee.
The Volunteers’ fan base runs rampant across the state, and Bristol drew 156,990 fans for the Guinness World Record-setting college football game nine years ago.
Dirt from baseball’s infield may seem new to that of the racetrack. But not necessarily at Bristol, which has hosted three dirt races of its own this decade.
“You have this incredible facility, ridiculous number of seats,” Logano said. “Everybody wants to compete in The Last Great Colosseum, right? Everybody wants to do it. This presents an opportunity for something like that, and I couldn’t understand how big of a task it is to create a baseball field in the middle of a racetrack.
“But if anyone’s gonna do it? Bristol will do it. They’ve already put a little dirt on a half-mile.”
This story was originally published April 12, 2025 at 5:29 PM.
