Food City 250 - Bristol

by Bruce Simmons
pic from nascar.com

The racing looked good on the NEW Bristol track surface. See my outline on what they did to the track at: Bristol Specs Kasey Kahne won the race, as in the last 15 laps saw the front runners rubbing fenders with each other.

At the start of the race, racing was clean. The semi-variable banking provided multiple lines and the racing was clean at the front of the race. For a moment, I thought we were going see a race in an hour and a half the way they were first running, but single car spins started to sprout out of the new surface.

Ryan Newman was leading on old tires (100+ laps old) when Kasey Kahne and Jason Leffler came up to tangle for the lead. Ryan was using the outside line to hold them off, then he let Kasey in on the outside of him (Man, that sounds funny referring to a Bristol race).

They rubbed fenders, Kasey on the outside, Ryan on the inside, a lapped car coming up on the inside, with Leffler behind them and closing hard.

Leffler doing what he does best, made it FOUR wide at the worst possible moment and rubbed his RR fender up into Ryans LF forcing Ryan into Kasey's LR fender, and Ryan lost his tire from that contact.

The rest of the race (a few laps) was a mystery as ESPN lost their satellite feed, but replayed the last 2 laps, showing Kasey Kahne winning, Leffler, not quite able to overtake him on the inside line, came in second and David Reutimann coming in third.

See the unofficial results here: nascar.com