Sports Time Radio

This week the NASCAR races are being held at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol Tennessee. Now on Thursday the Camping World Truck Series had a wild finish which unfortunately do to my work schedule I was unable to see. Last night the Xfinity race ended with the winner actually coming across the finish line sideways. Who knows what’s going to happen tonight when the Monster Energy Series drivers take to the track tonight, but it will probably be interesting.

Bristol is one of if not NASCAR’s most popular race among fans and is actually the third largest sports venue in America and the seventh largest in the world. When you get 162,000 NASCAR fans in the stadium type seating Bristol is NASCAR’s loudest track.

Bristol is just a 1/2 mile long short track and while the speeds the drivers reach won’t get anywhere near what they would be on a super speedway Bristol is the fastest short track on the NASCAR schedule. The track also has some distinct features. Bristol has two pit roads along with an all concrete racing surface plus banking that is between 24 and 30 degrees.

The track itself opened in 1961 and was called Bristol International Speedway from 1961 to 1977. From 1978 to 1995 it was called Bristol International Raceway, but since 1995 the track has been called Bristol Motor Speedway.

Bristol has also hosted three football game. One back in 1961 and two in 2016. The 1961 game was an NFL pre-season game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Washington Redskins now the Washington Football team. The other two games played their where college football games. One featured the Tennessee Volunteers and the Virginia Tech Hokies while the game game had the East Tennessee State Buccaneers and the Western Carolina Catamounts.

Obviously Bristol is a racing venue and hopefully you got to see at least the end of the Xfinity race last night. The race went into overtime meaning there would be a Green, White, Checked finish. Austin Cindric was the leader heading into overtime and with this being a “choose rule” race Cindric decided to start in the outside lane. Justin Allgaier was in 2nd place going into overtime, but decide to start behind Cindric in the outside lane. A.J. Allmendinger jumped at the chance to move into the front row and took the inside lane starting next to Cindric. Adding to the end of this race Cindric was holding a 1 point lead over Allmendinger for the regular season points championship.

in overtime Allmendinger drove hard into Turn 3 and Turn 4 and slid up into Cindric’s car. The move knocked Allemndinger back into 3rd place as Allgaier was able to get past him into 2nd place and it looked like Allmendinger wouldn’t be a factor in who would win this race.

Well then Allgaier who seemed to have contact with every car in the race last night made contact with Cindric which gave Allmendiger the opportunity he was looking for. Allmendinger went to the bottom of the race track to make it three-wide and got into the lead, but this race wasn’t quite over.

Coming off the final corner Cindric had a run and just slammed into Allmendinger turning both cars sideways as they slid across the finish line. Since Allmendinger’s car turned in front of Cindric’s Allmendinger got the win by just .082 seconds.

After the finish of the race Allmendinger’s car slid into the inside wall and headed back up the race track into traffic where he had a huge collision with of all drivers his Kaulig Racing teammate Justin Haley. Fortunately neither driver was injured, but per NASCAR rules since Allmendinger’s car wasn’t running he had to go to the infield care center before he could go to victory lane and celebrate not only his race win, but his regular season points championship.

Since this was the final regular season race the Xfinity playoffs start next week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Allmendinger, Cindric, Allgaier and Haley will be joined by Noah Gragson, Daniel Hemric, Jeb Burton, Harrison Burton, Myatt Snider, Brandon Jones, Riley Herbst and Jeremy Clements.

Since Allmendinger was a repeat winner there where no new playoff qualifiers; so Jones, Herbst and Clements get into the Xfinity playoffs on points.

Now tonight instead of it being the last race of the regular season this is a playoff race for the Monster Energy series. That means a win automatically moves you into the next playoff round. Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. have won the first two playoff races and have already qualified for the next playoff round. Will we have a new driver join them tonight?

There will be four drivers eliminated after tonight’s race; so you have to think that any of those drivers who could be facing elimination will do just about anything to move into that next playoff round. If one of them is up front towards the end of the race it could give us our third exciting finish at Bristol this weekend.

As we check in on Schaumburg Stu’s picks; he went 2- last weekend and this weekend he got started off even as well. Schaumburg Stu had the Milwaukee Brewers beating the Chicago Cubs and the Brewers needed a comeback to get the win, but they ended up getting the win for Schaumburg Stu. then he went with what would be an upset as he had the Texas Rangers beating the Chicago White Sox last night and that didn’t go his ay as the White Sox won easily 8-0. Both of Schaumburg Stu’s other picks are on Sunday a he not only ha the Chicago Bears beating the Cincinnati Bengals, but he also has the Bears covering the 2 1/2 points they’re favored by.

The Sports Time Radio podcast airs live on BlogTalkRadio.com. On Friday’s podcast Schaumburg Stu makes his picks. Now if you miss the live edition of the podcast you can still listen by heading over to TuneIn.com.

You can also find me on Twitter @Burketimie