For the first time since 2020, Bristol Motor Speedway will return to hosting two NASCAR weekend events on its concrete surface for the 2024 season.
The announcement means that the Bristol Dirt event, which occurred in the spring for the last three seasons, including this year, and reignited NASCAR’s return to dirt racing in over five decades, will be discontinued from further use.
As a result, the Bristol spring event will mark NASCAR’s first time competing on the 0.533-mile track’s concrete surface in the spring for the 2024 season since 1993. The event will also return to run 500 miles with Food City to remain as the event’s title sponsor.
“As the motorsports world focuses on America’s Night Race tomorrow, we are thrilled to announce Bristol Motor Speedway will host the return of the Food City 500 on the concrete high-banks of the World’s Fastest Half Mile in the spring of 2024,” Jerry Caldwell, President and General Manager of Bristol Motor Speedway, said in a statement. “We will revive a logo reminiscent of the first Food City 500s in the early ’90s and resurrect the track’s vintage trademark look and feel of the era. We’re looking forward to a great weekend of racing and what’s to come in 2024.”
During the spring Bristol’s transition from concrete to dirt in 2021, Joey Logano won the NASCAR Cup Series’ first dirt event on the 0.533-mile circuit following an overtime shootout. By then, it marked the series’ first dirt event since seven-time champion Richard Petty won at Raleigh’s North Carolina State Fairgrounds in September 1970. The Bristol Dirt event would return in 2022 with Kyle Busch winning following a last-lap overtake on both Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe before Christopher Bell won this year’s event after fending off a late charge from Reddick.
During the Cup Series’ three-year run at the Bristol Dirt layout, the Craftsman Truck Series also competed on the surface, with Martin Truex Jr., Ben Rhodes and Joey Logano winning from 2021 to 2023, respectively.
Announcements regarding Bristol’s two scheduled dates for next season along with the full 2024 NASCAR schedule have yet to be announced.
