A Team of One: Bristol Motor Speedway

Other than the fight, the most exciting thing at Dirt Devils Speedway was how simple the set-ups were. It’s always exciting seeing a girl that can bench more than Mark Martin start a fight but the cross weight was unreal. So was the camber! With the monsoon that came through this week the track felt just like Bristol. Slick and slippery.

So instead of trying some magical set-up that no one else has you need to stick with the basics of handling.

What I’m trying to say is that you can’t go for a home run on a track that throws a knuckleball. What you can do is try to get on base. The damage model on iRacing will be illustrated in the following image. If you think you can go out and afford to slip-up a few times you are wrong. You will need to be on the ball all of the time every lap.

The best way to handle a track like Bristol is to conserve tires. You can slow down a second a lap and still not save them because you are on the wrong line. Drive it in hard and let it slide up. Bring it down to the middle for exit and flat foot it center off. Surprisingly similar to a go-kart, actually.

“You can’t go for a home run on a track that throws a knuckleball.”

And Kyle Busch. Yes, I couldn’t have a Bristol article written without a Kyle Busch segment. So what about him? There is a secret to his madness. If you were watching the Phoenix NASCAR Nationwide Series race last week you may have heard his crew chief says he does a job of saving his stuff. Wait, what? Kyle Busch saving his stuff? Not true.

Yes, it is. That’s why he is so successful at Bristol. However, if you look at it he drives the car the harder than everyone there. He can run a line hard without tearing up his tires. That is the whole objective at Bristol. If you can get your set-up to cooperate so that it allows you to run hard without leaning on the RF or RR then you can be successful.

The first adjustment I made was lowering the truck arm mount. The whole goal is to flat foot it off the corner and you can’t do that if the car is snapping loose. Lowering the right truck arm mount will reduce the snappiness and loosen entry a little bit.

Looking for a good result at Bristol? Just think WWKD?

If you don’t have the correct cross weight the car is undriveable. I like anywhere from 60.0% up. Don’t be scared to tighten the car up at all. If you need to correct then do it. Just make sure you are adjusting to the correct line and not the incorrect one you may be driving on for that run. Many people will be wrecking tight or loose. If you go through a run and experience either of these take a step back and adjust the cross weight accordingly.

The fixed set has a small amount of forward ballast. I honestly don’t like this as it restricts my ability to rotate center. I set the forward ballast to 0.0” and added LF camber. As you add camber the car rotates a little better since the edge of the tire becomes the point of contact.

To wrap this up, don’t try to do anything fancy. Simple adjustments followed by some tweaking to help fit your driving style is all that is needed to be fast here. Good luck and happy wrecking.

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