For the first time ever, the NASCAR Cup Series All-Star race will contest on a weeknight. It also marks just the second time in the 35 year history of the race that the annual event will run away from Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Charlotte, hosted the inaugural event in 1985. It was moved to the Atlanta Motor Speedway a year later (1986) before being moved back to the North Carolina oval for the last 33 years.

Now, due to COVID, this year’s race was postponed in May and moved now to a totally different track. Last month, NASCAR unveiled that the All-Star race this year would be moved from Charlotte to the Bristol (Tenn) Motor Speedway.

While part of this move was due to rising cases in North Carolina, the other part is NASCAR is using this year’s race to experiment some more.

From the choose cone rule on restarts, to underglow under the cars, to the numbers moved back on the cars as well to a new venue on a weeknight, how many of these new experiments stick?

One of them would be maybe moving this All-Star race around some.

For years, the rumor was the Iowa Speedway could play host to a weeknight All-Star race. While Iowa lost all but one race weekend this year, Bristol was first out of the gates.

Now, do we stay in Bristol for 2021 or move again?

“Yeah, I think it’s a great idea,” Byron said of moving the All-Star race around each year. “You know, logistically, I don’t really know the rights and the way that things play out as to who has the rights to the All-Star Race, parse, but I think logistically it’s a good idea.”

The Hendrick Motorsports driver notes that not every track is worthy of an All-Star Race, though. He thinks that there are probably five or six that are definitely worthy in terms of capacity and excitement level of the race track that it generates. Bristol is one.

“I could think of a road course possibly being very cool for an All-Star Race, just for the way that you can race and the braking zones and passing that might open-up because of it,” Byron continued. “So yeah, a place like the Roval would be cool, maybe the road course at Daytona might be cool. I just don’t really know. Bristol seems like the perfect place, to be honest.”

Denny Hamlin heads to this race searching for redemption for how the points paying race on the half-mile Tennessee oval ended in June. Hamlin, was winning in the closing laps but made a mistake and crashed from the lead with 11 to go.

“Yeah, well Bristol is another one that I look forward to get back there for a little redemption,” said Hamlin’s crew chief Chris Gabehart. “We won the fall race last year and were inside of 12 to go from winning this one. We felt like we had it in the bag, as well. Denny (Hamlin) was just trying to stretch his lead a little bit to give us some buffer in lap traffic and stepped over the line as it’s so easy to do in Bristol and got in the fence and ultimately, that was the end of our race. So, I know Denny will be hungry to win the All-Star, get back to Bristol and sort of get back on the right foot.

“We’ve had really good cars there lately, and the All-Star at Bristol is going to present a lot different feel than it does at Charlotte. We need to be the first team to capitalize on that because it’s going to be much different race.”

With Bristol causing some fireworks between drivers a few months ago and having $1 million on the line, expect a wild race on Wednesday night.