Will high grip in low lane give Bristol missing drama?

The bottom lane of Bristol Motor Speedway’s half-mile track looks like a child took a large black crayon and colored the concrete.

Hey, whatever works.

Bristol’s attempt to change how the track races seems to have paid off – at least for now – and it should provide Saturday night's Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race with some intrigue (8 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network).

Exactly how is unclear. Will the bottom lane, covered with rubber and a tacky substance, be the preferred line as it was during Wednesday night's Camping World Truck Series race? Or will the top lane get faster, as has been the case in recent years?

If the changes make the track race anything like the “old” Bristol, fans should be happy.

Ever since Bristol reconfigured its surface in 2007, fans have complained they miss the former version. That was when there was a single preferred lane on the bottom of the track and drivers often impatiently bumped one another out of the way to pass.

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It created sparks and crashes, fostered drama and tempers – and lots of ticket sales. The Bristol night race was once the hottest ticket in sports, and Bristol sold out for 55 straight races overall until 2010.

That’s not the case anymore. Attendance at Bristol’s race in April was particularly jarring, as cars raced around in front of tens of thousands of empty seats in the 146,000-seat venue.

Bristol tried something different for this week, though. It used what industry types are calling the “tire dragon” or “tire monster” – a machine that drags tires on the track and forcibly lays rubber down to create grip.

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In addition, acting on the advice of several top drivers, Bristol covered the lower lane with a sealant called PJ1 TrackBite (formerly known as VHT). The substance is used at NHRA tracks to increase grip and, according to a product description on Jegs.com, it “achieves added traction by means of adhesion and does not soften tires.”

When the Truck Series drivers unlocked its potential this week, the lower lane was more than a half-second faster per lap than the high line.

But what’s the difference between a single-file lane on the low side and a single-file lane on the high side? For one thing, it was nearly impossible to bump someone out of the way on the high side; after all, there was nowhere to go. If the low line is the place to be, perhaps the old bump-and-run (or spin-and-run) will return.

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That’s not pure racing, which most fans think of as side-by-side battles and clean passing. But Bristol isn’t about purity and gentlemanly conduct, which is what track officials overlooked when they listened to the drivers and created a track with progressive banking.

People come to Bristol for the action, the excitement, the anger. They want to see Tony Stewart get so mad that he throws his helmet (as he did at Matt Kenseth in 2012) or hear Brad Keselowski call Kyle Busch a bad name on the track’s public address system (as he did during driver introductions in 2010). That’s why the track’s nickname is the “Last Great Colosseum” – gladiators don’t battle with manners and respect.

Bristol’s upcoming college football game between Virginia Tech and Tennessee can’t hog all the big hits and wow-worthy moments; NASCAR used to have a monopoly on those things in the Tennessee hills.

So if a bunch of rubber and a sticky substance helps Make Bristol Great Again, then fans are in for a fun weekend of racing.

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck