March 27, 2021 | By Lee Spencer

Pinty's Truck Race on Dirt delayed until Sunday at Bristol

The Camping World Truck Series completed just one lap in the first Heat before Mother Nature unleashed her wrath on Bristol Motor Speedway and forced officials to cancel all events on Saturday.

NASCAR has rescheduled the Pinty’s Truck Race on Dirt for 9 p.m., on Sunday. Starting lineup is set by owner points with  John Hunter Nemechek on the pole. JR Heffner, who withdrew on Saturday, will miss the race along with Ryan Newman, Jessica Friesen and Trevor Collins.

The truck race has been moved to FS2.

Kevin Harvick, who returns to the truck series for the first time since 2015, starts 30th. He was one of 11 drivers that completed one lap before the windshields and grilles were caked with mud. As for the track, Harvick told FOX Sports, “I think these are better conditions, you just have to be able to see.”

The Food City Dirt Race will remain scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Sunday. Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin will share the front row. However, the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team changed engines on Friday, so Larson will drop to the rear of the field.

Larson posted the Best 10 Consecutive Lap Average speeds in both practice sessions. Ryan Blaney set the fastest single-lap run in Happy Hour—89.233mph (20.172-seconds).

“It’s rough, slick, really rough actually,” Blaney said after the session on Friday.  “The track is kind of coming up and just crazy big divots. It’s definitely not smooth. It’s rough, but you just run through things that you think will work and there wasn’t really much lane changing going on. Larson and (Tyler) Reddick could kind of run the top for a little while and then it kind of went away after a handful of minutes, but just seeing how straight and smooth you can be and trying to keep tires on it. 

“We’re seeing a lot of tires getting corded pretty quickly, especially right-rears, even right-fronts started to go pretty quick, so that’s something that’s gonna come into play is saving your tires when the track is probably gonna be like this come race time.”

After excessive tire wear during Friday’s two practice sessions, teams will now receive an extra set of tires. NASCAR also elected to add two competition cautions at Lap 50 and Lap 150. Initially, the stages were set to end at Lap 75, Lap 150 and Lap 250. NASCAR has adjusted the Cup stages to Lap 100, Lap 200 and Lap 250.

“This is something we haven’t done in the premier NASCAR series for a long time—over 50 years,” said Scott Miller, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition. “So we knew, especially with the character of this track, that we could be faced coming into this weekend with some things that we needed to adjust to. So based on practice yesterday, a couple of things—higher than anticipated tire wear and then y’all saw the dust and everything.

“So this gives us more opportunity to prepare the track during these breaks and it kind of assures us that the story will be really about the racing and asking the tires to do more than they can really isn’t in the best interest of anybody so we made these adjustments in the best interest of this event and the entire industry.”