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Guess who's back...
Back again...
Irwindale's back...
Tell a friend.

Wish Toyota would man up and run the new 86 in Nationwide instead of the shitty Camry.

Wish Toyota would man up and run the new 86 in Nationwide instead of the shitty Camry.

Tires -- not reinventing speedway -- might be Bristol's answer: #88-Dale Earnhardt Jr. had some advice for Bruton Smith: talk to the drivers before firming up plans to reinvent Bristol Motor Speedway. It might be a good idea for Smith to talk to Goodyear, too, given that changing the tires at Bristol might be a far less expensive alternative to changing the racetrack. Track owner Smith, chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc., said he was embarrassed by the turnout for last Sunday's Sprint Cup race at the .533-mile track. Consensus was that the grandstands, which can seat 160,000 fans, were roughly half-full. Possible solutions could a include to a return to the one-groove racetrack that disappeared with a 2007 reconfiguration that added graduated banking and opened the outside lane. Side-by-side green-flag racing replaced the typical Bristol bump-and-run, which inevitably led to a rash of caution flags. Tires with more grip and faster degradation might change the complexion of racing at Bristol, if cars with new tires become significantly faster than those on old rubber. "I think if we show up at Bristol with a tire that lays rubber down and is really soft, and it wears out& we need to get it back to where tires mean something," said Aric Almirola, driver of the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford. "Nobody really ever comes in and takes four tires and blows the field anymore." The bottom line is that, if tires degrade rapidly, you'll have cars running radically different speeds on the racetrack, and the mixture of speed and strategy should improve the action.

The NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race ... will consist of four 20-lap segments, concluding with a 10-lap sprint and a $1 million payout to the race winner. This year's format will place a higher premium for drivers who win one of the four segments, however, as the winners of the first four segments will move to the front of the field and line up 1-4 prior to the field coming to pit road for the final mandatory pit stop. Wherever the drivers are positioned as they come off pit road after that pit stop is where they will line up to start the final 10-lap segment.