Everything you need to know about NASCAR's radical dirt-track race at Bristol

For the first time since 1970, the NASCAR Cup Series is racing on dirt.

Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. You may have heard that NASCAR has a big and very different weekend lined up at Bristol Motor Speedway, but you’re not really sure what’s happening. That’s OK because we’re here to help.

NASCAR races at Bristol Motor Speedway are often hyped up and ones drivers and fans have circled. But this season, the first of two Bristol races on the schedule is making a ton of noise. And getting dirty.

Bristol’s .533-mile concrete track has been converted to a dirt one, so for the first time since 1970, the NASCAR Cup Series will run a dirt race: the Food City Dirt Race at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday (FOX).

This is a big experiment on NASCAR’s part, making the race one of the most anticipated on the revamped 2021 schedule.

Now, most of the 36 NASCAR Cup Series races this season are being held without any practice or qualifying sessions because of COVID-19 protocols. However, there will be practice and qualifying for eight weekends at new tracks or big races, including the Bristol dirt race.

But qualifying for it — like several other elements of the Bristol dirt race — is going to look a bit different. So here’s a summary of how it’s all going to work.

Bristol dirt race’s starting lineup and qualifying heat races

A hat tip to the roots of dirt-track racing, NASCAR will use qualifying heats to determine the starting lineup for the main event, and those heats will begin at 6 p.m. ET on Saturday (FS1). Per NASCAR, as of Monday, there will be three heats of 10 cars and one heat with nine, and a random draw based on current team owner points will determine the starting position for the heat races.

A similar qualifying format will be used for the third-tier NASCAR Truck Series race Saturday night, in which several Cup Series drivers — including Kevin Harvick, Bubba Wallace and Martin Truex Jr. — are entered.

And both series will have two 50-minute practice sessions Friday.

So how will the Bristol dirt qualifying heats work exactly?

Each of the four qualifying heats will be 15 laps each. Only the green-flag laps will be counted, and there is no overtime.

To determine the starting lineup for the actual race, NASCAR is using a formula combining where a driver places in their respective heat with how many cars he or she passed during the heat, or passing points.

A first-place finish in the heats earns 10 points, second place earns nine, and so on down to 10th place earning one point. That will be combined with passing points from the heat, where drivers will earn an additional point for each position gained in the 15-lap run. But there won’t be any deductions for positions lost in the heats.

If there is a tie from the heat points, it will be broken based on current team owner points.

What’s the format for the Bristol dirt races?

The NASCAR Cup Series race Sunday will still be divided into three stages, as usual, with the first two stages being 75 laps each with the final stage set for 100 laps for a total of 250 laps. Unlike in the qualifying heats, caution laps will count.

For Saturday’s Truck Series race, the three stages are broken into 40-, 50- and 60-lap segments.

What about pit stops?

This one is a big change compared with the typical NASCAR race. Once the stages end, the running order of the race will be frozen, setting up noncompetitive pit stops for safety reasons, NASCAR noted. So there is no race to or off pit road.

As NASCAR senior vice president of competition Scott Miller explained earlier this month:

“We kind of toyed around with the idea of could we or couldn’t we have pit stops like we normally see every week. Honestly, with dirt cars on a dirty concrete pit road, having pit crews trying to run out there and do all of that, I just don’t think that would have been in our best interest, especially the first time around.”

Only during stage breaks — not under green or yellow flags — will teams be allowed to change tires, fuel up or work on their cars. However, there will be exceptions for teams involved in incidents.

For this to work, none of the stage lengths for either series are longer than the full fuel window for the cars.

Will the “choose rule” — which allows drivers to select the lane they want to restart from — be a thing for the Bristol dirt race?

Absolutely not. And NASCAR’s logic for this is pretty basic:

The difficultly of maintaining an orange “V” on the dirt-racing surface was a key determining factor of this decision.