2017 Bristol Champ/Match Tours: 5toGo

In a few weeks, the SCCA will host the first "double header" Match and Champ Tour weekend. What could be a more fitting place than the "double header" town of Bristol, sitting on the line between Tennessee and Virginia?  One long weekend will net you two events worth of seat time, competition, contingency, and fun.  The weekend starts off with the Champ Tour on Saturday and Sunday, followed by the Match Tour on Monday and Tuesday.  Last year's Match Tour was the first for the Bristol site and had a solid attendance.  This year builds on that popularity with both events near or at capacity. If you're not entered... now's the time!

Since getting there should be half the fun, travelers from the south have the opportunity to stop in the beautiful city of Asheville, NC to make the most of their vacation.  Coming from the west?  Maybe you're passing through the Country Music capital of Nashville, TN?  From the north?  I-81 brings you through the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and into Bristol.

Regardless of direction of travel, the area around the site is beautiful.  Nestled in the rolling foothills of the Appalachian Mountains (it's pronounced app-uhh-LATCH-uhn down here), Bristol Motor Speedway like many NASCAR tracks, sits a few miles outside of the town it's named for.  The course area itself is in a valley between the Speedway to the west and the Drag Strip (affectionately known as Thunder Valley) to the east. On Friday and Saturday of our event, there will be Peterbilt truck show taking place up the hill at the drag strip featuring diesel drags and fireworks on Saturday night, should you feel a desire to venture out just a bit and spectate another form of motorsport.

Life isn't all motorsports, though... gotta eat and sleep sometime!  The town of Bristol itself is a few miles up the street and has the required hotels and restaurants to handle the hordes of NASCAR spectators, so choices abound.  While there's not a lot near the site, Holston River Brewing Company is less than a mile away and will surely see some participants stopping in to fill their bellies with one of their delicious burgers.

A few miles up the road, Bristol has a beautiful historic downtown area recently featured in a commercial where a certain animated reptile selling insurance hops back and forth with one foot in each state.  Here's your chance to imitate it, but you should probably watch out for traffic.  And going back to country music.... did you know that Bristol is the birthplace of it!  If you're a country music fan, be sure to check out the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in downtown Bristol on the Virginia side of the border or the Mountain Music Museum on the Tennessee side of the border. 

The beautiful setting and the grippy, challenging course site should make the Bristol double-header a "can't miss" event.  

 Photo by Perry Bennett