Back Stretch Archives: Dirt Racing At Bristol From June of 2000

As of right now my first race to attend in person in 2021 is slated to be the big dirt racing extravaganza at the Bristol Motor Speedway so as a refresher I have pulled up the Back Stretch column that appeared in Hawkeye Racing News back in early June of 2000. From my conversations with Mike Van Genderen who will be in charge of track prep and who will be handling the Race Director duties, the banking for this next round of dirt on Bristol will not be as high and you have to think that in twenty-one years the quality of the equipment has to be improved to a point where we will not see the issues after twenty or more high speed laps.

The pictures that I have included are NOT from this race at Bristol, but just a few shots that I took back in the early 1990's of drivers that are mentioned here. Have a great weekend and enjoy the trip down memory lane!

Judging by the atlas that was spread across Morgan’s lap, the Bristol Motor Speedway would be coming into sight at any moment. We searched in great anticipation around each and every curve until finally, as we rounded one last Tennessee foothill, there it was. What an incredible sight! I have been to, or at least driven by, some of the largest stadiums in the country, but nothing compares to Bristol and the fact that these 140,000 seats were now surrounding a .533-mile red clay dirt track just made it even better.

Friday night started off with a pair of qualifying heats for the UMP Modifieds that had qualified from a pair of events held earlier at Bulls Gap and Atomic. Randy Zimmerman held off Kelly Shryock to win the first one while Randy Boggs ran away from the field in the second heat. We noticed Mark Noble’s car in the infield but as expected it did not run as we figured that Mark would be competing at Denison on Friday night. As it turned out Mark traded another Denison victory for a back row start in the Bristol event.

Scott Bloomquist

After a bit of track maintenance, one hundred eighty-nine Hav-A-Tampa late models moved into the infield for two laps of qualifying with only the top 144 moving on to Saturday night activities. For you trivia buffs the #111 car of Bo Shirley from Gadsden, Alabama, was the first car on the clock and his first lap was a 17.759 second run. This was well off the quick time set later on by Wendell Wallace at 16.200. Out of all 189 cars who qualified only one, Scott Bloomquist, missed all three exits off of the track and into the infield, eventually tripping the timing device for the next car out. You have to give the HAT officials credit as they penalized Bloomquist for this by starting him at the tail of the first qualifying heat on Saturday. The final event of Friday night saw some action after the checkers as well. It was the non-qualifiers race that we thought was won by Alabama driver Don Farmer, but we were told the following night that he was light at the scales. The race ended with the first hard crash of the weekend as Milwaukee’s Frank Smith hit the wall protecting pit road.

Ronnie Johnson

A heavy afternoon thunderstorm delayed the program by about an hour on Saturday night leaving the track in perfect shape for a long night of action. Before I go on, I must say that the people who designed and constructed this “temporary” track did an absolutely fantastic job. We saw it put to the test in hot dry conditions on Friday night, while on Saturday night it was cool and moist and on both nights the track held up perfectly. The six late model qualifying heats provided the best racing action of the weekend with plenty of high-speed jousting and late race moves for qualifying spots. Some of the highlights included: Scott Bloomquist came from twenty-first to tenth in the first twelve lap event that saw Scott Sexton get by Ronnie Johnson late to pick up the final transfer spot. Billy Moyer came from ninth to finish second in the third heat. Jason Smith made a gutsy move on the outside to knock Earl Pearson Jr. out of the final transfer position in the fourth heat. Donnie Moran made the biggest move of the night storming from the ninth starting spot to win the fifth heat, while in the sixth heat it was Davey Johnson by just inches over Mike Duvall for the final qualifying spot.

Wayne Brooks

Next up was the Pizza Plus Invitational for the UMP Modifieds and with twenty-eight of the best drivers in the country set to take the green, I sure did not expect to witness what followed. Spins and crashes in the middle and the back of the pack brought out the caution on each of the first three attempts at a start and, after that, the field only seemed to be able to complete one lap at a time. After seven yellow flags in the first seven laps, many of the fans around us were using some pretty colorful language to describe the Modifieds. Thank goodness that the drivers pulled themselves together and put on a pretty good race after the lap seven caution. On that restart the leader, Randy Zimmerman, was caught sleeping and was passed by Kelly Shryock right after the cone. Late in the race Shryock was able to hold off challenges from both Wayne Brooks and Jimmy Owens, but a red flag for a rollover by Randle Sweeney with two laps to go changed that. On the restart Brooks got a nice run as they picked up the white flag and flew by Shryock on the outside in turn two to take the win. Shryock held back Owens for second with Zimmerman and Kerry Norris completing the top five.

Three Last Chance races for the late models were up next. In the first one, Steve Shaver found the inside groove to his liking late in the race, just in time to nip Ronnie Johnson for the final transfer. Earl Pearson Jr. and Terry Phillips easily qualified out of the second one, while the third race had a little different type of drama. John Mason was running near the front when he spun going into turn one and backed up against the wall. Almost everybody was able to miss him except for Thomas Ware. Ware barely clipped the front of Mason’s car vaulting the young Kentucky driver up and over between turns one and two. “The Undertaker” as he is called, climbed out of his car and jubilantly waved his helmet to the crowd telling one of the officials that this was the first time that he had gotten upside-down and that he was proud to do it at Bristol Motor Speedway.

“Track Prep” was next on the schedule, but it was so perfect that all that was needed was a sprinkling of the topside to keep the crumbs from drying out. At this point it looked as if many of the drivers who had stayed away from this event due to concerns about the toll that it would take mechanically may have been wrong, but up until now, the most laps that had been run at once was twelve. The true test was about to come in the Living Air 100. Mike Balzano was the class of the field early coming from the second row to walk away with the lead. Shannon Babb came from sixth to pick up the chase in second while Steve Shaver moved from twenty-fourth to twelfth in just eight laps. On lap twenty-four the trouble began.

The incredible speeds began to tear the center section out of wheels and shredding tires turning the event into a race of mechanical survival from there on. The casualty list looked like this:

Lap 24: Shannon Babb loses a right rear wheel while running second.

Lap 25: Terry English loses a left rear wheel

Lap 30: The right rear wheel tears off of the Jimmy Mars car

Billy Moyer

Lap 33: The leader, Mike Blazano, watches his race come to an end as his right rear wheel passes him unattached.

Lap 59: Billy Moyer shreds a right rear tire while in third

Lap 73: The second place car of Chub Frank loses his right rear wheel and, at the same time, the sixth place car of Scott Bloomquist shreds a right rear tire

Lap 84: Steve Francis has his right rear tire go flat.

This list would have definitely been longer had officials not decided to begin counting yellow flag laps after the halfway mark. Defending HAT champion Dale McDowell, who assumed the lead when Balzano dropped out, held on for the victory ahead of Wendell Wallace, Steve Shaver, Skip Arp and Booper Bare. It was a huge victory for McDowell who is still in search of a major sponsor as he tries to defend his Hav-A-Tampa title.

Even with all of the attrition in the feature race, this event was a huge success with a large car count, a perfect racetrack and an enormous crowd. As of this writing I have not yet heard any attendance figures, but it had to be at least 50,000. If this is to be held again in 2001, the wheel manufacturers will need to get busy right now as that is the only thing that will be needed to make it any better.

Terry Phillips

Random Notes from Bristol….Rain delayed the event for an hour on Saturday and during wheel-packing, the three track-packers entertained the crowd with some rubbing and bumping of their own. In fact, the packer with number 24 on it suffered a flat tire on two different occasions after contact with the number 3 and the number 8, requiring service from the infield tire center….There were three rollovers during the weekend. Randle Sweeney in a Modified, Thomas Ware in a late model and one of the Hav-A-Tampa officials took a tumble on his four-wheeler when he attempted to push one of the errant wheel and tires down the back stretch. He was a little red-faced, but not injured….The week before, while watching the World of Outlaws at Lowe’s on TNN, I noticed that the crowd would all stand up as soon as the green flag waved. Must be a Winston Cup thing as they did it at Bristol too. At most dirt tracks, the crowds know that when everybody sits, everybody sees, and at Knoxville the announcers even remind you to remain seated during the racing. I’m 6’3” so standing doesn’t bother me, but I think I’ll save this for an entirely different column….With several cautions and HAT’s rule of giving a driver three caution laps to change a tire the feature ended at 2:15 a.m. eastern time and that was only with a one hour delay. It was a long show, but it was worth it this time.

Donnie Moran

Jimmy Mars

On our way home Sunday we were able to catch four heats and two dashes for the World of Outlaws at Terre Haute before an annoying light rain set in and washed out the feature races. Joey Saldana will try to make it a clean sweep on July 17^th.

This week will be a busy one for us as we’ll be at Park Jefferson Speedway on Friday night as the NKF Modifieds run in support of the NCRA Sprint Car event there. We plan to stop in Knoxville on the way home Saturday for another night of NCRA Sprints. On Tuesday the NKF Mods will be at the Open Late Model Shootout at the Dubuque Speedway and then on Thursday night we’ll be at the Eldon Raceway as the NKF Modifieds and Hobby Stocks entertain the crowd at the Wapello County Fair. Stop by and say “Hi”.