Skip to content

Food City 500 Pre-Race Report

Event Overview

Event: Food City 500 (Round 5 of 36)

Time/Date: 3:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, March 17

Location: Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway

Layout: .533-mile, concrete oval

Laps/Miles: 500 laps/266.5 miles

Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 125 laps / Stage 2: 125 laps / Final Stage: 250 laps

TV/Radio: FOX / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

 

SHR Fast Facts: 

– Chase Briscoe enters the high banks of Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway on a high after scoring his highest finish of the season last Sunday at Phoenix Raceway. Briscoe wheeled his No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse to a strong ninth-place drive in the 312-lap race around the 1-mile desert oval, putting the Mitchell, Indiana, native at .500 for the year when it comes to top-10 finishes. Briscoe scored a 10th-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500 and, four races into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, Briscoe is 19th in the championship standings.

– Josh Berry heads to his home state this weekend for Sunday’s 500-mile race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. It will be the NASCAR Cup Series debut on the high-banked, .533-mile oval’s concrete surface for the native of Hendersonville, Tennessee, located some 295 south and west of Bristol on the outskirts of Nashville. Berry does have one Cup Series start at Bristol, albeit in last year’s April race subbing for an injured Chase Elliott when the concrete surface was covered with dirt.

– Sunday’s Food City 500 returns to the concrete of Bristol Motor Speedway and Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing, is poised for a breakthrough performance on the half-mile, high-banked oval in Eastern Tennessee. Preece has competed in three different racing divisions at Bristol – the NASCAR Cup Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour – for a total of 17 starts and 4,877 laps, or the equivalent of 2,600 miles, roughly the same distance between Preece’s hometown of Berlin, Connecticut, and Phoenix Raceway, site of last Sunday’s Cup Series race.

– With three finishes of 12th or better in the four NASCAR Cup Series races run this season, Noah Gragson is rolling. The driver of the No. 10 Bass Pro Shops/Ranger Boats/Tracker Boats & ATVS Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Stewart-Haas Racing has an average finish of 15.8, with his only blemish being a 36th-place result in the year’s second race at Atlanta Motor Speedway when he was collected in a multicar accident on just the second lap. In his 39 career Cup Series starts prior to this season, Gragson has never had such a stretch of front-running consistency. Now, the 25-year-old Las Vegas native turns his attention to Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Food City 500, where he will make his first Cup Series start on the concrete-clad, .533-mile oval.

OUR WEEKLY WRAPS

WHAT OUR DRIVERS ARE SAYING:

Chase Briscoe, Driver of the No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang Dark Horse

Are you happy to see the spring Bristol race return to concrete, or are you one of the guys who enjoyed the dirt race?

“I’m all about just going to Bristol, in general, but I definitely loved the dirt race. I feel like the Cup Series needs to have at least one dirt race. Truthfully, the first year was not the greatest race, but the last two years I thought was a really, really good race. I was kind of bummed to see it leave. That was obviously a race I always looked forward to and one that felt like I could go to and run up front at every year we did it. It’s kind of bittersweet getting rid of it, but at the same time, Bristol on the concrete is always one of the more fun races on the schedule. Maybe one day we can go back to dirt racing, but, yeah, I’m definitely going to miss it. ”

Josh Berry, Driver of the No. 4 SUNNYD Ford Mustang Dark Horse

You’re heading to Bristol Motor Speedway in your home state of Tennessee, and you have a deep history in short-track racing. Do you feel any kind of pressure as one of the drivers to watch this weekend?

“Bristol is a short track but it’s its own animal. It’s unique in how it races when compared to a Martinsville or Richmond layout. I think for us, we are going to keep preparing the same way we have each week. We try to prepare for as many scenarios as we can each week no matter the track. I think if we qualify well and have a clean day on pit road, the finishes will come and that’s all we can really do at this point.”

Ryan Preece, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse

Do you feel that Bristol is one of the best opportunities for you and the team to potentially capitalize on with a strong finishing position, based on your past success at the track?

“It’s certainly been a track that has been good to me. It’s one of the stronger racetracks that we go to, so the confidence is pretty high. We’re building toward being consistent, and hopefully we can show up and have that speed.”

Noah Gragson, Driver of the No. 10 Bass Pro Shops/Ranger Boats/Tracker Boats & ATVs Ford Mustang Dark Horse

You’ve never raced a Cup car on the concrete at Bristol, so you’re a Cup rookie in regard to Cup racing at Bristol. How challenging is that and what have you been doing to prepare for it?

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the sim getting ready for Bristol. I like that track a lot. I feel like I know where I need to be around that track, at least in an Xfinity car and a Truck. Going there in a Cup car, it’s going to take constant learning and being aware all day and seeing how we can improve from the start of practice, qualifying, the race, and then, hopefully, when we go back there for the night race in the fall we can be even better and fire off with more confidence. But we’re going into it pretty open-minded right now.”