Irwin Tools Night Race

Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol

Venue	Bristol Motor Speedway
Sponsor	Newell Rubbermaid
First race	1961
Distance	266.5 miles (428.89 km)
Laps	500
Previous names	Volunteer 500 (1961-1975, 1978-1979) Volunteer 400 (1976-1977) Busch Volunteer 500 (1980) Busch 500 (1981-1990) Bud 500 (1991-1993) Goody's 500 (1994-1995) Goody's Headache Powder 500 (1996-1999) goracing.com 500 (2000) Sharpie 500 (2001-2009)

The Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol is a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stock car race held at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. It is one of two Sprint Cup races held at Bristol, the other being the Food City 500, but it is by far the more popular of the two. Since 1978, the race has been held in late-August on a Saturday night, and is considered among the most difficult tickets to obtain in sports, with waiting lists for this event one of the longest in sports. The race has aired on ESPN from 2007 through 2009 and began airing on ABC in 2010, the first time the race has been on broadcast television in many years.

Since 2001 Newell Rubbermaid has been the title sponsor of the race, and until 2009 their marker pen brand Sharpie lent its name to the race. Newell Rubbermaid elected to change the race branding to promote one of its other brands, Irwin Industrial Tools.

Past winners

• 1961: Relief driver Johnny Allen drove the race for Jack Smith; Jack Smith is credited with the win for starting the race.^[1]
• 1963: Relief driver Ned Jarrett drove the race for Fred Lorenzen; Fred Lorenzen is credited with the win for starting the race.^[1]
• 1971: Relief driver Raymond Hassler drove the race for Charlie Glotzbach; Charlie Glotzbach is credited with the win for starting the race.^[1]
• 1978: Race changed to become a Saturday night event.
• 1983: Race shortened due to rain.

Multiple winners (drivers)

Multiple winners (teams)

Manufacturer wins

Notable races

• 1964: Richard Petty led 442 laps but broke the rear end coming to the white flag and Fred Lorenzen erased a deficit of several laps to take the win.
• 1969: David Pearson survived multiple wrecks to win the first race with Bristol's new banking; the track banked its turns from 18 degrees to 36 to boost speeds; the change was criticized by most drivers due to the speeds, the resulting wrecks, and the greatly increased physical strain.
• 1971: Charlie Glotzbach needed relief help from Friday Hassler to post the win, the first for the new Richard Howard Chevrolet team wrenched by Junior Johnson; the race was run caution-free.
• 1973: Benny Parsons needed relief help from John Ustman to post his only win of the season; it was enough to help win the season championship.
• 1974: Neil Bonnett tore open forty feet of inside guardrail but was uninjured. On the final lap Cale Yarborough forearmed Buddy Baker sideways out of the lead; the win was the first for Junior Johnson since Carling Brewery sponsorship helped him purchase the team from Richard Howard.
• 1977: Janet Guthrie needed relief help from John Utsman, who drove Guthrie's Chevrolet home sixth, the best NASCAR finish of Guthrie's career. Cale Yarborough took the win, his eighth of the season.
• 1978: Yarborough took the win in the first night running of the Volunteer 500. Following announcement that Darrell Waltrip would drive for Harry Ranier in 1979, Ranier's present driver Lennie Pond got into several on-track skirmishes with Waltrip.
• 1979: Richard Petty won the final pole of his driving career and finished second to Darrell Waltrip.
• 1981: Waltrip finished a season sweep of Bristol races as Dale Earnhardt survived a brutal crash into pit road.
• 1984: After seven straight wins by Waltrip, Terry Labonte ended that streak by scratching to his second win of the 1984 season, a key win in his run to the '84 title.
• 1990: After Dale Earnhardt fell back Ernie Irvan beat Rusty Wallace in a late sprint to his first win.
• 1992: The track was resurfaced in concrete, and Darrell Waltrip took his final Bristol win.
• 1993: Fatigue affected Rusty Wallace as Mark Martin took the win, his third straight of 1993.
• 1995: Multiple crashes (including several skirmishes between Bobby Hamilton and Brett Bodine that led to a black flag for Hamilton) and the start being delayed by rain pushed the finish past midnight and as Terry Labonte ran into lapped traffic he was spun into the wall crossing the stripe by Dale Earnhardt. Labonte drove his wrecked Chevrolet to victory lane.
• 1998: Mark Martin took the win and dedicated the race to his father Julian, who had died weeks earlier in a plane crash.
• 1999: Terry Labonte was spun out by Darrell Waltrip as they checked up for another car's wreck ahead of them; the skirmish occurred in the final ten laps, but Labonte got tires and blasted from sixth to the lead; he scraped past Dale Earnhardt on the final lap but off turn 2, Earnhardt blasted Labonte into a spin, wiping out several cars. The win was booed savagely by the surprised audience and Labonte's crew chief Andy Graves bitterly described "two washed up former champions" (Waltrip and Earnhardt).
• 2002: Jeff Gordon won after doing a bump-and-run in the last laps on Rusty Wallace. Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. were the dominant drivers, Earnhardt leading the opening 130 laps. The race was full of flaring tempers, a lot of people ended up being summoned for various reason to the Big Red Truck. One of these examples was Ward Burton, who threw his brakepads at Earnhardt after Earnhardt wrecked him in turn 3 on lap 403.
• 2003: After a postrace confrontation with Kurt Busch at Michigan, Jimmy Spencer was suspended for a week by NASCAR. Busch was booed when he took the win.
• 2005-8: Roush-Fenway Racing won four straight Sharpie 500s with the wins split by Matt Kenseth (2005 & 2006) and Carl Edwards (2007 & 2008).
• 2010: Kyle Busch won after dominating despite a tire going down on the final lap. This put Busch in the record books as the first driver to sweep all three top series' races on the same track on the same weekend, dubbed "The Trifecta". He also won the Camping World Truck race on Wednesday night, and the Nationwide race on Friday night. Out of a possible 956 laps he led 116 out of 206 in the truck event (race ended with G-W-C finish six laps past the scheduled distance of 200), 116 of 250 in the Nationwide event, and 282 of 500 in the Cup event. Together he led 514 of 956 laps, or about 53.8% of the laps run.
• 2012: Denny Hamlin won, holding off Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. This was the first race after the top groove had been regrinded, leading to the return of bump-and-run racing. There were several on-track altercations. On lap 333, Matt Kenseth and Tony Stewart tangled fighting for the lead, and Stewart responded by throwing his helmet at Kenseth's hood. Later, Danica Patrick was wrecked by Regan Smith and flipped him the bird.

Television broadcasters

References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Daily Trackside Report". The Auto Channel. August 2, 1996. Retrieved September 28, 2013. 

External links

• NASCAR Commentators Crews and Networks