NASCAR has decided not to go on dirt tracks again after a three-year experiment it conducted at Bristol during the 2021 to 2023 Cup Series seasons. The fan reception for the races wasn’t as great as the promotion had hoped.
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However, Joe Gibbs Racing’s main man Christopher Bell is still hoping the Cup Series will race on dirt again. He has even thought of which tracks NASCAR should stage the races on to make it a success.
Bell blamed NASCAR’s reluctance to go all in on dirt racing like it did with road course racing for the failure. So, he suggested two or three dirt races be added to the schedule if at all a return was being considered by the promotion.
“There are a ton of venues out there. So, you know, Eldora is definitely the first one that comes to mind just because they had the Truck Series race there for several years. I mean, honestly, Bristol is a great asphalt track or concrete track. So, it sucks to see Bristol lose a concrete race,” Bell said on the Rubbin’ is Racing podcast.
“But their [Bristol’s] dirt event was awesome too. So, I know I could go either way on that one,” added Bell before listing Knoxville Raceway, apart from several tracks in Pennsylvania, California, and all over the country that are great venues for dirt action.
However, the Eldora Speedway, the track owned by three-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart, is his first choice.
Bell’s love for Eldora remains strong, as the track made him the star he is today. He won his first truck race there. In fact, his insistence on racing at Stewart’s track made him choose a career-defining deal with Kyle Busch Racing (Toyota) over RFKR (Ford) in 2015. Bell described what happened back then.
“I could either sign up to run full-time ARCA in 2015 [with RFK], or I could stay with Toyota, and they guaranteed me like 10 or 15 late model races. And the breaking deal for me was: I said, ‘If you can just give me this Eldora Truck race, I will stay with you guys, I get 15 late-model races. I’ll do the late model races and then this Eldora Truck race’,” recalled Bell.
“And that’s what it ended up being. I ended up with Toyota because they gave me the late model races and the Truck race at Eldora,” he added.
Stewart became the owner of the 0.5-mile clay dirt oval in New Weston, Ohio, in 2004. It is fondly known as the World’s Greatest Dirt Track. It was opened in 1954 and hosted the World of Outlaws for the Kings Royal from 1984 to 2019.
The race returned in 2021 and has been held there since then. The World 100 has been held at the track every year since 1954. NASCAR has previously raced on it as well. The Craftsman Truck Series visited it from 2013 to 2019 for the Eldora Dirt Derby.
Several improvements have been made to the track over the years to make the facilities state-of-the-art. So, Eldora Speedway is worthy of being a NASCAR Cup Series venue. However, the top tier is not likely to return to dirt tracks any time soon.
