The Food City 500 is an annual 500-lap, 266.5-mile (428.9 km) NASCAR Cup Series points race held at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. This is one of two NASCAR races held at Bristol, the other being the Bass Pro Shops Night Race. It was the first venue of the 2007 NASCAR schedule to host the fifth-generation NASCAR premiership race car, a race won by Kyle Busch. For much of its history, from 1961 to 1992 the race was run on the original asphalt surface, then on concrete from 1993 to 2020 after Bristol changed surfaces, but was moved to a dirt layout beginning in 2021, under the name Food City Dirt Race. Beginning in 2024, the race was held on the concrete oval.[1]
Southeastern 500 (1961–1975, 1977–1979) Southeastern 400 (1976) Valleydale Southeastern 500 (1980) Valleydale 500 (1981–1986) Valleydale Meats 500 (1987–1991) Food City 500 (1992–2010, 2012–2014, 2016–2019, 2024-present) Jeff Byrd 500 presented by Food City (2011) Food City 500 In Support Of Steve Byrnes And Stand Up To Cancer (2015) Food City presents the Supermarket Heroes 500 (2020) Food City Dirt Race (2021-2023)
The former Food City Dirt Race logoThe previous Food City 500 race logo
In 2008, Bristol Motor Speedway President & General Manager Jeff Byrd requested that NASCAR move the spring race to a later Spring date, to avoid the problems with rain, snow, and sleet that hit the area in late winter and early spring. This was not carried out until 2015.[2] In 2015, the race moved from mid-March to April.[3] Though every race besides 2016 has had some sort of rain alter the race including moving the race to Monday in 2017 and 2018.
In 2011, title sponsor Food City announced it would honor former Speedway President and General Manager Jeff Byrd, who died in October 2010, by renaming the 2011 Spring race the Jeff Byrd 500 presented by Food City.[4]
The 2020 race was dubbed the Food City presents the Supermarket Heroes 500 to honor grocery store workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
In 2021, the race shifted to a dirt surface version of the track and was renamed the Food City Dirt Race.[7][8] The race's stage lengths were initially set at 75 each for the first two segments followed by 100 in the final stage,[9] but stages 1–2 were later adjusted to be 100 laps apiece following Friday practices.[10]
In 2022, the race became a night race, and was run on Easter Sunday. Part of the reason it was moved from daylight to nighttime is because of visibility issues that plagued the event in 2021 with sunlight reflecting off the dirt.
On September 15, 2023, Bristol announced that the Food City 500 would return to the concrete oval, beginning in 2024.[11]
1971: Pearson won after tagging James Hylton into the wall; Pearson edged Richard Petty after Petty erased a two-lap deficit.
1972: Mechanic (and later car owner) Junior Johnson saw the first of a plethora of Bristol wins over the ensuing two decades as Bobby Allison drove his Chevrolet to an easy win.
1991: Grasping for a solution to pit road crashes emanating from numerous incidents in 1990 (and never considering revoking the pit closure rule that was the ultimate cause), NASCAR had banned tire changes under yellow; for Bristol, this was replaced with the staggering of pit stops based on qualifying line — all "odd" cars (qualified first, third, etc.) would pit first under yellow while "even" cars would pit a lap later; the cars were denoted "odd" and "even" with stickers on their windshields after qualifying; restarts would be double-file based on "odd" and "even" stickered cars. More "even" cars wound up in contention, and this created chaos. Rusty Wallace was able to pass cars under caution to move into his proper restart line, and this helped him come back from two laps down on two occasions. The lead changed 41 times, a short track record, as Wallace edged Ernie Irvan at the finish. Sterling Marlin suffered burns in a fiery melee and needed relief help in subsequent weeks from Charlie Glotzbach.
1992: Alan Kulwicki won the race; the last to be held at Bristol before the switch from asphalt to concrete pavement.
1993: Wallace dominated days after defending race winner, and defending Winston Cup champion Alan Kulwicki died in a plane crash.
1994: An ill-timed yellow trapped Geoff Bodine a lap down and put Dale Earnhardt into the lead en route to the win. Bodine had begun dominating the race in the car formerly owned by Kulwicki and running Hoosier Tires; with the Hoosiers Bodine was able to skip tire changes that Goodyear-shod cars had to make.
1995:Jeff Gordon took the win, his third in the season's first six races; the race saw notable performances resulting in top-five finishes for Darrell Waltrip and Bobby Hamilton.
1997: Gordon punted Rusty Wallace sideways on the final lap for the win.
1999: Wallace ran away at the end, while John Andretti rallied to finish fourth; Andretti's Petty Enterprises Pontiac was impounded after the race as NASCAR had a disagreement with the engine's compression ratio; the engine, though, cleared on reinspection.
2000:Rusty Wallace scores his 50th NASCAR Cup Series win.
2002: With NASCAR running high downforce on the cars via big rear spoiler and low airdam clearance, and running very hard tires, Kurt Busch pitted on Lap 325 and never visited the pits again. He bumped Jimmy Spencer for the lead and went on to claim his first Winston Cup win. The move was one of several incidents to occur between Busch and Spencer in what was becoming a heated feud. Rusty Wallace was incensed at the manner with which Busch won the race (by not pitting when others did and thus winning on old tires with no drop in speed) enough that he lobbied NASCAR to cut downforce and go to softer tires in later years to force pitstops.Dale Jarrett's team and fans honor Jarrett before the 2008 race.
2003: In what was the 2,000th race in NASCAR Cup Series history, Kurt Busch came back from a spin to win the race. Also during the race, Kyle Petty got clipped by Ward Burton in the left rear and turned him very abruptly and into the wall driver's side. Petty's crash was then the biggest crash recorded by the black box, recording 80 G's of force on Petty.
2004: The final race for Pontiac in the Cup Series as a whole, as Hermie Sadler No. 02 finished 31st.
2005: Slight contact between Bobby Hamilton Jr. and Ken Schrader on lap 332 triggered a 14-car wreck. While Kevin Harvick was the winner, 22nd-place Bobby Labonte finished 32 laps down, a rarity for the series over the previous 25 seasons.
2007: The Car of Tomorrow debuted. After Joe Gibbs Racing dominated the race, Kyle Busch drove a Hendrick Chevy to the win, then pointedly ripped the poor raceability of the COT in victory lane.
2010:Jimmie Johnson had never won at Bristol until this race; it was his 50th Sprint Cup Series win.
2011: After track president Jeff Byrd's death in late 2010, Food City and Bristol Motor Speedway agree to name the race in memory of Byrd in a one-year-only deal.
2013:Kyle Busch won the pole with a then-new track qualifying record at 14.813 seconds (129.535 mph). Kasey Kahne won his first Bristol race. The race also marked the start of a feud between Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, after Hamlin spun Logano during the race.
Matt Kenseth celebrates after winning the 2015 race which was delayed due to weather.2014: Denny Hamlin started on pole with a new track record, his first pole of the season. The race was delayed twice, just like the Daytona 500, for rain. Matt Kenseth was involved in a wreck at lap 163 when Timmy Hill rear-ended into him after caution was called for a spin by Cole Whitt. Carl Edwards was leading with a few laps left when a mysterious caution was out. During an attempt for a Green-white-checkered finish, the rain started falling and the race was unable to be restarted and would end under caution.
2015: The race was scheduled to begin at noon ET and be televised by Fox, but rain delayed the start for 79 minutes. A crash between teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano brought out the caution on lap 19. During the caution, rain began to fall again. The rain was delayed until night and because Fox had another programming, aired on Fox Sports 1. The race resumed at approximately 6:30 p.m. ET, almost 5 hours after the 1st green flag. Although rain threatened to end the race twice, the race was run to completion. Matt Kenseth won, breaking a 51 race winless streak.
2018: Rain and four red flags plagued the race on Sunday only getting in 204 laps with the race continuing and concluding on Monday. It tied the record for most red flags in a single NASCAR race with the 2015 Quicken Loans 400, also red-flagged four times. All four red flags in that event were due to weather. Kyle Larson led the most laps for the second straight year (200) but got spun by the lapped car of Ryan Newman at lap 325. Larson was back in the lead with less than 100 laps to go; he was heading for victory until pole-sitter Kyle Busch performed the "Bump n' Run" on Larson with 6 laps to go to steal the win, his 7th at Bristol.
2021 The NASCAR Cup Series ran its first race on dirt since 1970 (51 years). After multiple accidents took out several of the pre race favorites, Joey Logano survived an overtime restart to become the first Cup Series driver to win on dirt in the modern era.
2022 On the last lap, Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe battled for the win with Reddick in position for his first career Cup Series win. In Turn 3, Briscoe sent it in hard to pass Reddick and the two ended up making contact sending both of them spinning around. Reddick got back going but was passed just before the start-finish line by the 3rd place car in Kyle Busch and Busch took home the win with Reddick in 2nd.
