2024 Food City 500

2024 Food City 500

Race details[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Race 5 of 36 in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series
Date	March 17, 2024 (2024-03-17)
Location	Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee
Course	Permanent racing facility 0.533 mi (0.858 km)
Distance	500 laps, 266.5 mi (428.890 km)
Average speed	79.678 miles per hour (128.229 km/h)
Pole position
Driver	Ryan Blaney	Team Penske
Time	15.356
Most laps led
Driver	Denny Hamlin	Joe Gibbs Racing
Laps	163
Winner
No. 11	Denny Hamlin	Joe Gibbs Racing
Television in the United States
Network	Fox
Announcers	Mike Joy, Clint Bowyer, and Kevin Harvick
Radio in the United States
Radio	PRN
Booth Announcers	Doug Rice and Mark Garrow
Turn Announcers	Rob Albright (Backstretch)

The 2024 Food City 500 was a NASCAR Cup Series race held on March 17, 2024, at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. Contested over 500 laps on the 0.533 miles (0.858 km) short track, it was the fifth race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. Denny Hamlin won the race. Martin Truex Jr. finished 2nd, and Brad Keselowski finished 3rd. Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson rounded out the top five, and John Hunter Nemechek, Chris Buescher, Chase Elliott, Ty Gibbs, and Christopher Bell rounded out the top ten.

The race achieved prominent attention because of the combination of very serious tire wear to where drivers slowed their pace up to three seconds a lap and rampant passing to where the lead changed a NASCAR short track record 54 times.

Later, Hamlin was fined and the team stripped of all points from the race, and 31 additional points (75 points overall lost) when Toyota admitted they had broken NASCAR's sealed engine policy by rebuilding the race-winning engine from this race before it could be inspected.

Bristol Motor Speedway, formerly known as Bristol International Raceway and Bristol Raceway, is a NASCAR short track venue located in Bristol, Tennessee. Constructed in 1960, it held its first NASCAR race on July 30, 1961. Bristol is among the most popular tracks on the NASCAR schedule because of its distinct features, which include extraordinarily steep banking combined with short length, an all concrete surface, two pit roads, and stadium-like seating.

In 2021, the race shifted to a dirt surface version of the track and was renamed the Food City Dirt Race.^[9]

On September 15, 2023, Bristol Motor Speedway announced that the race would return to being run on concrete.^[10]

• (R) denotes rookie driver.
• (i) denotes driver who is ineligible for series driver points.

Ryan Blaney was the fastest in the practice session with a time of 15.028 seconds and a speed of 127.682 mph (205.484 km/h).^[11]

Ryan Blaney scored the pole for the race with a time of 15.356 and a speed of 124.954 mph (201.094 km/h).^[12]

Stage One Laps: 125

Stage Two Laps: 125

• Hamlin was stripped of all points from this race as part of a 75 point penalty because of an engine violation admitted by Toyota in August 2024.

Stage Three Laps: 250

NOTE: On August 22, 2024, the No. 11 team was fined $100,000 with a 75 point penalty after Toyota officials admitted they had disassembled the No. 11 engine from Bristol, removing the NASCAR-imposed seals, before the engine could be presented to NASCAR for inspection. By rule, the long block must be reused during further races in the season, and the engine inspection is done after the engine has reached its end of life cycle before being rebuilt. A long block denotes the engine block, pistons, crankshaft, cylinder heads, valvetrain, and camshaft from that engine must be sealed with a NASCAR tag and when the engine is reused, must stay identical without being rebuilt. Those parts cannot be replaced.

During the August 2024 Daytona qualifying broadcast, Steve Letarte noted the engine was then used at the Goodyear 400 in May, but was not inspected by NASCAR after the race and instead, the long block was disassembled and rebuilt by Toyota in its Costa Mesa, California factory.^[13]

• Lead changes: 54 among 16 different drivers
• Cautions/Laps: 9 for 98 laps
• Red flags: 0
• Time of race: 3 hours, 20 minutes and 41 seconds
• Average speed: 79.678 miles per hour (128.229 km/h)

The Food City 500 was carried by Fox in the United States. Mike Joy, Clint Bowyer, and three-time Bristol winner Kevin Harvick called the race from the broadcast booth. Jamie Little and Regan Smith handled pit road for the television side, and Larry McReynolds provided insight from the Fox Sports studio in Charlotte.

PRN had the radio call for the race which was simulcasted on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio. Doug Rice and Mark Garrow called the race in the booth when the field raced down the frontstretch. Rob Albright called the race from atop the turn 3 suites when the field raced down the backstretch. Brad Gillie, Brett McMillan and Wendy Venturini covered the action on pit lane for PRN.

Drivers' Championship standings Pos Driver Points 1 1 Kyle Larson 185 1 2 Martin Truex Jr. 185 (–0) 3 3 Ty Gibbs 178 (–7) 3 4 Ryan Blaney 177 (–8) 3 5 Denny Hamlin 173 (–12) 3 6 Chase Elliott 152 (–33) 7 Ross Chastain 151 (–34) 4 8 Christopher Bell 138 (–47) 4 9 Tyler Reddick 137 (–48) 6 10 William Byron 136 (–49) 1 11 Daniel Suárez 133 (–52) 1 12 Alex Bowman 132 (–53) 9 13 Brad Keselowski 125 (–60) 2 14 Chris Buescher 124 (–61) 6 15 John Hunter Nemechek 124 (–61) 5 16 Kyle Busch 122 (–63) Official driver's standings

Manufacturers' Championship standings Pos Manufacturer Points 1 Chevrolet 184 2 Toyota 181 (–3) 3 Ford 166 (–18) Note: Only the first 16 positions are included for the driver standings.