Food City 500 Pole Day Tickets Tickets

If you have a nice and shiny car, when you take the green flag at Bristol Motor Speedway, it's unlikely that it will stay that way for very long. Bristol Motor Speedway has torn up more than its share of race cars. Whenever you put 43 cars together on a .533-mile oval, there's not a lot of real estate for every car, so many races at the Bristol bullring look more like demolition derbys and less like races. FOX's Food City 500 Pole Day pre-race show Sunday will focus on the toll that 500 laps at Bristol takes on a car and its driver. Nextel Cup rookie Brian Vickers is up for the test. "To me, Bristol provides the greatest sensation of speed of all the tracks we race at," Vickers said. "It's a place where you really have to hustle the car and experience a lot of G Forces' because it seems like you're always in the corners due to the short straight-aways.

Brian Vickers has insufficiency of experienced people to draw from before his first Nextel Cup race at Bristol this weekend. "You use every bit of the track exiting the corners and run so close to the outside walls that you see the fence posts just zipping by, making it feel like you're going extremely fast." FOX will also view how slower cars impeed the progress of faster cars on race day. The topic has gotten a lot of consideration lately thanks to the Andy Hillenburg/Jeff Gordon incident at Darlington last week. "I'll tell you what, there's a bunch of cars out there than don't belong," Gordon said after the event. "They're way off the pace and in the way." Darrell Waltrip will give viewers another installment of his "Hot Spot" feature this week, outlining a part of Bristol Motor Speedway that could honor drivers with some problems. This week's question comes from Gary Thompson of Hendersonville, why is your pre-race show longer for Busch Series races than it is for Nextel Cup races? I'm not sure if it is every week but it was last weekend at Darlington.  NASCAR on FOX producer Neil Goldberg explains: "FX is able to program in a longer pre-race show due to the fact that the Busch races are shorter races. Also, being a cable network FX has great flexibility with their programming time because they do not have to worry about affiliate stations.

On FOX you have longer races like the Food City 500 Pole Day, that are planned between time that the local affiliates have programming content." Let your voice be heard: Each week, we'll pick one question to ask the producer of the FOX telecast. Why did they do things this way? Why did they talk to that driver? Any question that eats at you could be answered right here in the Viewer's Guide. The Rant: This week, Adam Dunn says Dale Earnhardt Jr. is getting too much attention during telecasts. "The coverage would be great if you didn't have to hear about Dale Jr. 50 times a race. My god, I heard "and junior is behind the wall again" so much during the Vegas race I heard it in my sleep for three nights. Dale Earnhardt Jr. remains a topic of discussion throughout NASCAR. Credit: Autostock "I don't dislike the guy at all I wish him the best, although I'm not his fan. I'm a Harvick fan. All I'm saying is there are a lot of sponsors that pay a lot of money to see their car on a national broadcast. But, if they're not either running in the top five or being passed by the 8 car on his way into the pits for another set of shocks, they don't get any air time. "If I paid millions of dollars to a race team to paint "shut up about Junior" on the car, then I better see it on T.V. on Sunday, whether their in first or 43rd. And we wonder why everyone is having sponsor trouble."

Adam, I have to disagree with you. For starters, like him or not, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the most popular driver in NASCAR. Ratings and advertisers can tell you that. Therefore, whatever he's doing on the track is going to be followed. Also, let's not forget that in Vegas, Earnhardt Jr. was the points leader and had just swept both the Food City 500 Pole Day Cup and Busch Series races at Daytona. He was relevant then, and he still is relevant now. As far as every car deserving air time, it would stand to figure that a top team can demand more money than a second-tier team. For that premium, advertisers should and do get more exposure.