Bristol was.....you know Bristol

[Joe Fan]

Drivers getting into the back of others, wrecks taking other cars out, spins, bumping and grinding----cautions. Always an entertaining race.

Dale Earnhardt was in the lead and looked to have the car to beat until he got caught up in Kenny Irwin's mishap.

Mark Martin suffered all day from having to pit on the backstretch due to a poor, uncharacteristic qualifying performance and then someone got into the back of him ruining his chances of a top five finish.

Jeff Gordon hit Steve Park's tire exiting his pit box damaging his front end which hurt him a bit but he recovered to finish 8th.

Dale Jarrett had something go wrong with his car late in the race that caused him to have trouble entering the turns. I haven't heard what it was exactly but they thought he might have had a tire go down. He was strong late in the race and looked to have a great chance of a win until this happened.

The rookies really looked liked rookies in the race and I was beginning to wonder if Jeff Fuller was going to be asked by NASCAR to park his car after spins and contact with others.

Rusty Wallace picked up his 50th NASCAR Winston Cup win. Both he and Gordon were tied with 49 wins entering the season and who would have thought that Rusty would beat him to 50. Johnny Benson finished second and is making the Lycos.com people look smart for sponsoring him.

[Gerard]

Joe, there is one line in your post that raises a question.
You said Mark Martin suffered all day from having to pit on the backstretch.
I know on these small ovals there are two pitlanes, but why is the backstretch pitlane a disadvantage?

[Joe Fan]

Gerard, because those drivers on the front stretch get to pit first, the pace car circles around and lets those on the backstretch then pit. Those that pit on the front stretch, as soon as the cross the white pit road line (this line is just past the first pit stall and the drivers must maintain pit road speed within the white pit road lines) they can then floor it once they are across this line and catch back up to the pace car on the track. Even if a team on the backstretch reels off the best pitstop time, usually most of the cars who pitted on the front stretch are already past them when they cross their white pit road line on the backstretch pits. It is a huge disadvantage and NASCAR is talking about making one huge pit road at this track to eliminate this disadvantage as they have on a few other tracks in the past couple of years. Not many tracks have a frontstretch and a backstretch pit area. Only the smaller tracks have these now.

Also, pit stall selection is determined by where you qualify. Whoever qualifies first, get first selection, whoever qualifies second gets second selection, etc. Those who qualify poorly get the hand me downs which means they get the backstretch pit stalls.

[This message has been edited by Joe Fan (edited 28 March 2000).]

[Gerard]

Wow, that is a real disadvantage then.
When a driver has a bad qualifying, and has to pit on the backstretch, but has worked his way up to the front, he'll lose a lot of places by just pitting, and has to start all over again.
Seems a good idea of NASCAR to look into this then.
Thanks for explaining, Joe.