Zane Smith Impresses For Front Row In Bristol Slugfest

Zane Smith (38) earned a season-best finish Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Jacob Seelman/Motorsports Hotspot photo)

BRISTOL, Tenn. – On a night where chaos and tire conservation were the name of the game, Zane Smith put together one of the best runs of his young NASCAR Cup Series career at Bristol Motor Speedway, showing incredible maturity and poise along the way.

It certainly didn’t seem that way starting out, after Smith put his No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford 24th on the grid in qualifying.

And if practice showed anything, it looked as though Bristol would provide another anti-tire wear, pro-track position race where one or a couple of drivers would dominate, something that fans and teams alike have become accustomed to in recent years at the Last Great Coliseum.

Unbeknownst to Smith or anyone else, the cooling temperatures made tires a priority, and fast. By lap 50 of the 500-lap slugfest, extreme wear forced early pit stops and made drivers conserve to survive.

Smith managed to score points in both stages, garnering a sixth-place finish in stage one and nabbing the runner-up spot in stage two. By the end of the night, he spent an incredible 410 laps in the top 10, a number only topped by Ty Gibbs, who led the most laps of anyone.

But Smith’s plan for success – making his final pit stop for tires at 25 to go – didn’t pan out when an incident between Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace, and Cole Custer brought out a late caution with 12 laps left.

He had to stay out for the final four-lap dash to the finish, while others pitted and had fresher tires than he did. Lined up on the front row opposite Carson Hocevar, Smith pushed up in turn one at the green flag, allowing Christopher Bell through to take a lead he wouldn’t relinquish again.

Smith finished in third place, earning his fourth top 10 and first top five of the season in bittersweet fashion.

“I felt like I did a pretty good job on that restart, but you’re just so loose. I got so loose,” he noted. “I don’t know. I picked up marbles there on the back[stretch] and washed it up into the [No.] 77 [Hocevar], and unfortunately that kind of lost our fighting chance.”

“It’s kind of a home race for our team owner, Bob Jenkins, and it was really cool to have a couple Fords up there battling for it. I could just taste [the possible win], but it was crazy there on old tires and a few things just didn’t quite play out for us.”

Bristol marked the second top five finish that Front Row Motorsports has garnered at the Cup level this year, adding on from Noah Gragson at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in April, and the best overall finish by any Front Row driver all season.

It was a bright flicker in a rather dismal campaign that Smith and his FRM teammates hope they can carry forward.

Meanwhile, the second round of the Cup Series playoffs begins at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sunday, Sept. 21, with broadcast coverage of the Mobil 1 301 airing at 2 p.m. ET on USA, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.