Bristol Motor Speedway opened its “Major League Year” in grand fashion Wednesday with some of the fastest racers in both NASCAR and NHRA as well as a pair of legends from Major League Baseball helping to kick off the 2025 season.
The day featured VIP hot laps, media interviews for all of the drivers and legends and an hour-long produced show hosted by Amanda Busick of FOX Sports with videos, music and more interviews to wrap it all up.
NASCAR drivers Brad Keselowski (Cup), Austin Hill (Xfinity) and Daniel Hemric (Trucks ) and NHRA Funny Car driver Austin Prock opened the day by giving track lap rides around the challenging .533-mile bullring in the Bristol Motor Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway pace cars to MLB legends Tim Hudson of the Atlanta Braves and Danny Graves of the Cincinnati Reds, among others.
Media from all across the Appalachian Highlands Region then broke out their tape recorders, video cameras and notebooks to talk to all of those personalities, along with Bristol Motor Speedway president and general manager Jerry Caldwell, and get the scoop on a very busy upcoming season as the track schedule features an amazing lineup:
- April 11-13, NASCAR Food City 500, SciAps 300 Xfinity Series and WEATHER GUARD Truck Race in the Craftsman Truck Series, Bush’s Beans Practice and Bush’s Beans Qualifying
- June 6-8, NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals
- August 2, MLB Speedway Classic inside the BMS oval featuring the Atlanta Braves vs. the Cincinnati Reds
- September 11-13, the Bass Pro Shops Night Race, Food City 300, UNOH 200 presented by Ohio Logistics and Bush’s Beans 200 ARCA Series race (NASCAR Playoffs)
Caldwell, who led the effort in 2016 for the NCAA record-setting 156,990-attended Pilot Flying J Battle at Bristol between the Tennessee Volunteers and Virginia Tech Hokies, is just as pumped to show off BMS’ versatility this year by adding a historic Major League Baseball game into the mix with some thrilling racing from NASCAR, NHRA and others.
“At Bristol Motor Speedway and Dragway 2025 is a Big League Year and we can’t wait for all the action to get underway," said Caldwell. "We are thrilled to have NASCAR return to Bristol in April for our throwback to the 1990s race, the tradition-rich Food City 500, and also in September for the crown jewel Bass Pro Shops Night Race. In June, we can’t wait to have the 330-mph dragsters back for the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway. And since we are well-known as the Home to Big Events, we thought it would be cool to welcome Major League Baseball to the Last Great Colosseum for the first time this August as the Braves and Reds will play the first official MLB game in the state of Tennessee. And we also have Monster Trucks, the PDRA Thunder Valley Throwdown and so much more. It’s definitely a big, big year for us at Bristol Motor Speedway and Dragway."
Reds Hall of Fame member Graves was awestruck at the concept of playing a baseball game inside a race track. It was his first visit to BMS and he said he can’t wait to watch the baseball game here and the racing.
“Just to see a baseball field on this track is crazy because the baseball field looks so tiny and this isn’t even a big track,” said Graves, the all-time Saves leader for the Reds. “Could you imagine at a superspeedway how tiny the field would look? This is awesome that this is happening. I kind of wish it happened when we were playing. We didn’t get any of that cool stuff.”
Braves Hall of Famer Hudson, a four-time All-Star and a 2014 World Series champ during his time with the San Francisco Giants, was also ready to suit up for a game in the infield after seeing the stadium plans.
"It's really awesome,” Hudson said. “The renderings that we had seen, it looks really beautiful. I think it's going to be something that's really impressive. We saw the layout and where they had home plate (positioned) and the bases. I think it's going to be awesome."
Both players feel like the fans are in for a treat.
“I think that game is going to be phenomenal, you are going to have 80,000 people or maybe even a 100,000, I don’t know how many,” said Graves who now serves as a baseball analyst for a variety of networks including MLB Network Radio and ESPN Radio. “I don’t think any baseball players have played in front of that many people.”
The NASCAR drivers gave both Hudson and Graves some hot laps around the track and the baseball legends are also going to be watching them race here later in the year.
The drivers are well-aware of the power that is Bristol Motor Speedway for creating iconic moments and thrilling finishes. Like NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace used to say, “When they turn on the lights at that joint, all hell breaks loose.”
"Bristol is just an electric atmosphere," said Hemric, driver of the No. 19 McAnally-Hilgemann Chevy Silverado in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Interestingly, Hemric, the 2021 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion, is also a former $100,000 Xfinity Series Dash for Cash winner at Bristol. This year he will try to score some additional bonus bucks in the NASCAR Triple Truck Challenge on the all-concrete high banks.
"Everything that goes on here is electric,” Hemric continued. “Just like the Speedway Classic that is going to be played here in (five) months, as well as an NHRA drag race and everything else that goes on here. It’s so cool to just be a part of it. And having been a part of it for as many years as I have now is just so much fun."
The veteran racer of the group attending the media day, Brad Keselowski, has won at BMS in all three of NASCAR’s top categories and has three Cup wins at the track as well, his most recent coming in the 2020 Food City Supermarket Heroes 500. His teammate, Chris Buescher, won the Night Race here in 2022 and Keselowski had a strong run here last March and finished in the top five.
“Bristol has been a good track for me, we had a number of good runs here,” said Keselowski, who drives the No. 6 BuildSubmarines.com Ford for RFK Racing. “The good runs are always overshadowed by the bad runs. We ran so well here in the (2024) spring race, and then came here in the fall race and had a poor showing. That’s what is really frustrating for us. But I’m encouraged that we will be able to come here and have two great runs this year.”
One of the current frontrunners in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, a Georgia native and die-hard Braves fan, Austin Hill would like to get a bucket-list victory at Bristol during his two attempts this season, the SciAps 300 on April 12 and the Food City 300 on September 12. In April, he could also be gunning for the Xfinity Dash for Cash bonus.
“We’ve had some success here at Bristol, but never won here,” said Hill, who also ran in the Craftsman Truck Series here prior to his current gig of driving the No. 21 Chevy for Richard Childress Racing. “I’m hoping to change that this year. Bristol is just one of those places that the line where your car’s working changes throughout the race. Maybe you’re at the bottom to start the race, and then you kind of work your way up, and you get running the fence there towards the end of the race.”
Hill, who recently opened his season with a victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway, says he prefers running the wall at Bristol, which he says comes later in the race once the grooves all open up on the tricky, high-banked short track.
“I have found some success here running the wall, and I’ve never been one that’s great at running the wall,” Hill said. “I had a shot at winning here in 2022, ended up having some damage late in the race, and we ended up with a third-place finish. I’m not going to say that this track owes me one or anything like that. We haven’t been close enough to win, but we’ve had some success here.”
And across the way from the World’s Fastest Half-Mile, sits Drag City U.S.A., or better-known as Bristol Dragway, where another featured guest of the day in the season preview, Austin Prock, had an amazing 2024 during the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. He pushed his Cornwell Tools Chevy owned by NHRA icon John Force to the win and it launched a victory parade across the U.S. for the third-generation racer and former USAC champ.
Prock, who won eight times and set a national speed record at 341 mph last year en route to his Funny Car world championship title, is looking forward to getting back to Bristol Dragway in June and getting his Funny Car season moving again like the locomotive he rode last year.
With every ticket being a pit pass and some of the amazing speeds that is produced during the weekend at Bristol, Prock says it is a race that is always circled brightly on his calendar.
“If you’re a race car driver, you sure do enjoy a place like this,” Prock said. “There is a little lifting going on about the 330-feet mark. My experience racing sprint cars, especially on dirt, comes into play, but you have to make such split-second decisions with these cars.”
To purchase tickets for the Food City 500, Bass Pro Shops Night Race or any of the BMS NASCAR events in 2025, or the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway, or the MLB Speedway Challenge, please visit www.bristolmotorspeedway.com or call the BMS ticket sales center at (866) 415-4158.
