Bristol Motor Speedway - Other Uses of Bristol Motor Speedway

Other Uses of Bristol Motor Speedway

In 2005, track owner Bruton Smith made a public offer of $20 million apiece to the University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech to schedule a non-conference college football game between the powerhouse Volunteers and Hokies' programs. Smith suggested that grass could be grown in the infield section of the racetrack. Virginia Tech showed much interest and nearly agreed to the proposal but Tennessee on the other hand showed little or no interest and in fact avoided the offer which made this possibility ultimately fall by the wayside.

Organizers hoped that a game would draw 150,000 spectators, which would break all previous American team sports records for attendance. The track's location near the Virginia/Tennessee state line puts BMS about 125 miles (201 km) from Tech's campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, and about 110 miles (180 km) from the UT campus in Knoxville, Tennessee. However, holding a football game at the site would now seem highly impractical following the recent construction of the aforementioned scoring pylon and four-sided video screen in the middle of the infield.

The speedway was one of the racing tracks used in the 1990 film Days of Thunder, starring Tom Cruise.

The 2006 Disney-Pixar film Cars used Bristol Motor Speedway as the basis for the racetrack seen in the film's opening race, the "Motor Speedway of the South." The size of the track was increased to give it a more stadium-like appearance.

In the fall of 2002 students from Sullivan East High School in Bluff City attended the skyboxes at the Speedway as temporary schooling, due to an outbreak of black mold that closed the school for nearly 6 weeks.

The track is an easy to find landmark and has a large infield which make it useful for far more than just NASCAR. In 2010, Remote Area Medical held a health clinic on the infield of the track.