Tracks continue safety enhancements

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The management of the half-mile Bristol Motor Speedway–another track in O. Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports Inc. empire–also has updated its SAFER system. Jerry Caldwell, BMS’ executive vice president and general manager, announced in early April that SMI engineers recently secured an additional 600 feet of SAFER Barriers and will complete the build-out of the front and backstretch outside walls before the Food City 500 on April 19 (1 p.m. ET on FOX).

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular Carl Edwards said he wasn’t sure how the additional walls would affect the racing line on NASCAR’s most aggressive bullring.

“When they first did the SAFER Barrier, that affected things quite a bit or at least we thought it would,” said Edwards, driver of the No. 19 Stanley Racing For a Miracle Toyota Camry fielded by Joe Gibbs Racing. “Really, the race gets going and everybody finds the line and it wasn’t that big of a factor. I’m not even sure where they added them. So now they just go down the straightaways on the bottom and top? That’s great, so now it will just be narrower.

“That place is so fast and so narrow already. I don’t think it will make much of a difference. I do applaud them, all the track owners in NASCAR for doing that. Really there should be no place that there isn’t a SAFER Barrier if they can afford it and it sounds like that’s what we’re moving to.”

Reigning NSCS champion Kevin Harvick agreed that what comprises the straights at BMS will be narrower and tighter. “You already have to kind of come back off the corners when you’re running the top,” said Harvick, driver of the No. 4 Budweiser/Jimmy John’s Chevrolet SS fielded by Stewart-Haas Racing. “If you’re running the bottom, it’s just going to give you less space to let the car have its head up off the corner. So, it’s probably going to make the bottom even worse than it was.”

NASCAR Wire Service
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