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By Jonathan Schwab
Earning one of the biggest victories of his career, Rockbridge Baths resident Tyler Bare won the Bristol Dirt Showcase on April 1 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Bare, 28, was in sixth place before making an impressive finish. With 14 laps remaining in the 30-lap Steel Block Bandits feature, Bare made a three-wide pass for the lead and then held on to earn the $5,000 first-place check.
“It was pretty close,” said Bare in a phone interview on Friday. “I followed the leader, and then I got out on top.”
With a mix of technique and courage, Bare weaved around two polewinner Austin Neely of Tazewell, Tenn. and a lapped car for the top spot. Ryan King of Seymour, Tenn. placed second, and Tyler Arrington of Honaker finished third.
Although this wasn’t the biggest cash prize Bare had won, he said it was still “a pretty big deal” since it was his first time winning at Bristol.
Last September, Bare claimed the first-place $50,000 cash prize in the FASTRAK World Championship presented by Dealer Group USA at Virginia Motor Speedway near Tappahannock.
Bare is a third-generation race car driver. The Bare family racing tradition dates back to 1967 when patriarch Tommy Lee Bare, Tyler’s grandfather, began his career. Tommy died in 2020. Tyler’s father, John “Booper” Bare, had a lot of success racing on late model dirt tracks from the 1980s to the 2000s.
When he’s not racing, Tyler works on the farm with his father and spends time with his wife, the former Kelly Martin, whom he married last October.
