Todd Bodine is not happy about the facelift to Bristol Motor Speedway. According to the veteran NASCAR driver, track owner Bruton Smith went too far in reacting to the complaints of disgruntled fans. “To be quite honest I was pretty disappointed with the whole process,” Bodine said. “I’m not going to say they ruined things because this is Bristol and it’s always going to have great racing — but to take that outside groove away wasn’t the answer. The answer was for Goodyear to fix the tires.” Bodine and Timothy Peters were in Bristol on Monday to promote next month’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at BMS. It was announced Monday that the University of Northwestern Ohio will sponsor both the UNOH Perfect Storm 150 Whelen Modified event and UNOH 200 Camping World Truck Series event Aug. 22. For Bodine, the transformation of BMS is personal. In 2006, Bodine met with officials from Speedway Motorsports, Inc., and discussed the nuances of the variable banking that was put in place at the half-time BMS layout in 2007. While the drivers in all three of NASCAR’s top series enjoyed the gentler version of BMS, fans grew increasingly disenchanted over the lack of cautions at a track once famous for mayhem. Bodine followed both sides of the Bristol debates. And he feels the critics of BMS overlooked a couple of key factors. “I know that the fans didn’t like all the green flag laps,” Bodine said. “But that wasn’t a product of the track, it was a product of great race car drivers not making mistakes. Hopefully these changes won’t cause any wrecks,” Bodine said. “There are still two grooves – in the middle and on the bottom. And eventually that top groove will come back in. Once everybody gets up on the edge of it and tip toes into the side of it, the rubber will start building up and we will get the grip back. So we will have some side-by-side racing, I’m sure.”(to read complete article, go to TriCities.com)(7-25-2012)
