Ranking the 5 Best NASCAR Moments at Bristol Motor Speedway

There are very few tracks that can match Bristol Motor Speedway for action, excitement, drama and temperament—uh, make that tempers.

When things flare up at Bristol, you never know what’s going to happen. One minute things are very genteel, the next it’s sheer mayhem and bedlam. Things are that unpredictable.

What’s more, Bristol is the kind of track where almost every race—be it the annual spring Sunday race or summer Saturday night race—is memorable.

That’s why picking the five or 10 or 20 best races to ever be held at the .533-mile bullring is so hard to do. Because for every race that is picked, there are another five to 10 races that also deserve to be on the list.

So instead of complicating things by picking the 10, 15 or 20 best moments that have ever occurred at Bristol, I'm limiting it to what I feel are the all-time five best moments to ever have occurred at that little Eastern Tennessee bullring.

It’s Bristol, baby! And here’s why.

5. Jeff Gordon vs. Matt Kenseth: When Push Came to Shove

Sure, last year’s post-race melee at Texas between Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski and their teams was one of the most memorable confrontations we’ve seen in a long time. But there was another incident involving Gordon at Bristol that people still talk about today.

It happened in the spring 2006 race. Gordon was running third and trying to close in for another victory at BMS. The only problem was that Matt Kenseth was also battling for third. Neither he nor Gordon would give an inch, so in fine Bristol tradition, Kenseth spun Gordon.

Gordon, who was having a less-than-stellar season, was none too happy with Kenseth’s move.

When the two drivers got out of their cars after the race, Kenseth approached Gordon on pit road, presumably to talk about the incident. Instead of being civil and talking it over like rational human beings, Gordon let his hands do the talking for him, shoving Kenseth and knocking him back a few feet.

“I wasn’t happy about it, and I showed him after the race,” Gordon said in a post-race interview.

Afterward, Kenseth admitted in a post-race interview that he "probably should have waited a little bit longer" to approach Gordon. 

But Gordon got the ultimate revenge. Kenseth was heading to victory at Chicagoland Speedway later that year when Gordon spun Kenseth into the wall, ending his chance of taking the checkered flag.

Kenseth got the message, apparently, because there’s been virtually no conflict—and lots of respect—between the two since then.

4. Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards: A Beating and Banging Classic

I was at this race—the 2008 Sharpie 500—and remember it as if it was yesterday. While Kyle Busch has been one of the more dominant drivers at Bristol over the last decade-plus, this time his domination was his downfall of sorts.

Busch had led 415 laps, and with 35 laps remaining, he pulled ahead of the pack on the final restart.

While Busch took the middle groove, Carl Edwards went low, and one of the most memorable "rubbin’s racin'" moments in NASCAR history occurred. For roughly the next five laps, Busch and Edwards seemed like their cars were literally welded to each other. They traded paint, sheet metal and pretty much everything else.

Edwards ultimately came out on top, but Busch made sure he got a last shot in after they crossed the start-finish line. In turn, Edwards spun Busch.

Perhaps the best part of the whole incident was Edwards’ post-race comment on ESPN (in the above video): “So I asked myself, ‘Would he do that to me?’ And he has before. So that's the way it goes.”

And the rest is NASCAR history.

3. Darrell Waltrip’s Lucky Seven

Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip was one of the greatest drivers in Bristol history. Of his 84 career Winston Cup victories, Jaws won 12 times at arguably the best little short track in the land.

That’s one win for every seven starts—which is impressive in its own right, but nothing compared to what the guy who made “boogity, boogity, boogity” famous did between 1981 and 1984. Waltrip won not one, not two, not three in a row—rather, he won a spectacular seven straight times on Bristol’s half-mile track.

No one could touch Waltrip, who seemed to have himself dialed in so well that it wouldn’t be surprising if fellow drivers possibly conceded victory to him, he was just so dominant there.

Speaking of dominant, not only were his seven straight wins utterly memorable, consider this other fact: Of the 3,500 possible laps in those seven races, Waltrip led 1,542 of those.

2. Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte, Round 1: The Main Event

Two of the most epic battles in Bristol history involved the same drivers, the late Dale Earnhardt and Texas Terry Labonte.

We’ll get to the most epic battle between the pair in a moment, but let’s go back to 1995. As Neil Diamond would say, it was a hot August night, and Labonte was coasting to victory at Bristol. He was leading Earnhardt and the rest of the field by 1.5 seconds with 10 laps to go. Nothing, it seemed, could stop Labonte.

But Earnhardt sure gave it a good try.

Lapped traffic closed the gap between Labonte and Earnhardt, and by the time they got to the final lap—and thanks to a wreck between Mike Wallace and Jeff Burton—the track suddenly became a pinball machine, with so many cars bouncing off each other.

Earnhardt managed to emerge from the Wallace-Burton mishap, moved to the inside and clipped Labonte, sending him sideways into the wall. But Earnhardt slightly miscalculated his move: Labonte crossed the start-finish line sideways before hitting said wall, thus winning the race.

In any other instance, Earnhardt would have won as a result of the move. But maybe he misjudged or got a little overanxious—or, as they say in baseball, he was too late on his swing.

1. Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte, Round 2: The Rematch

Virtually every NASCAR highlight reel of any good measure and value has this race right near the top—if not at the top. Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte engaged in one of the most spectacular shows of beating and banging ever seen in the sport.

Labonte got ahead of Earnhardt on the final lap and appeared headed to the checkered flag, but The Intimidator didn’t earn that nickname for nothing.

Borrowing a page from World’s Wildest Police Videos, Earnhardt performed a perfect PIT (precision immobilization technique)—or using the “chrome horn,” as Earnhardt used to call it—by turning Labonte, causing a multicar wreck that ended Texas Terry’s chance at winning.

Meanwhile, Earnhardt sailed away to the checkered flag—essentially avenging the race he lost to Labonte four years earlier.

Lesson learned by Labonte in that race: Never, ever get ahead of The Intimidator on the last lap.

In Victory Lane, Earnhardt also uttered one of the most famous comments in NASCAR history: “I just meant to rattle his cage a little bit.”

Sadly, that would be Earnhardt’s ninth and last career win at Bristol

Follow me on Twitter @JerryBonkowski.