Racing needs to see crumpled fenders and searing tempers. A $5 hot dog, $6 beer and three-hour traffic jam would be just fine.

The sport needs to smell raw gasoline and scorched brake pads. It needs to wipe tire grit from its eyes.

NASCAR needs Bristol Motor Speedway.

The week leading up to Saturday night's Sharpie 500 has been filled with too many reports, too many color photos, too many experts, too many lawyers, too many press conferences and, most importantly, too many memories of an old friend.

Gentlemen, start your engines. Please.

Bristol is the kind of place that can help the Winston Cup Series get back to business. The six-month report on the death of Dale Earnhardt was a sobering reality this week - one that opened old wounds.

What's left is for scientists, racing officials and perhaps lawyers to hammer out the final chapter of Earnhardt's legacy. All the sport can do is get back to business. Bristol couldn't have come at a better time.

For most fans and many drivers, Bristol is the greatest speedway on the planet. It's only .533-miles in length, but its three-story, 36-degree banking is more reminiscent of a daredevil freak show at the circus. Kyle Petty once said racing at Bristol is like riding in a jet fighter inside a gymnasium.

By the time the race is complete, many drivers will be fighting mad at each other. Cars will be bent and spewing steam. It's the kind of place that packages more action in 500 laps than you'll find in a decade of racing at places like Indianapolis and Miami.

The sights and sounds are intoxicating because it is the very essence of what stock car racing used to be. The only way to pass is to be daring. And when that doesn't work, knock somebody out of the way.

Bristol is the perfect place for the sport to move away from Earnhardt's death. It's also the kind of place that makes you think of him.

Nobody was more daring or more willing to root and gouge his way through traffic than Earnhardt. When the racing was tumultuous and tempers flare, Earnhardt was at his best. He crashed Terry Labonte at the finish line at the end of the 1995 race at Bristol and the crashed Labonte again on the final lap of the 1999 race. Labonte won amid a shower of sparks and smoke in 1995, but he needed a wrecker to finish the race in 1999.

The sport now knows how Earnhardt died. His seat belt broke, and that allowed him to lunge downward and to the right at impact with Ken Schrader's car and again with the outside wall. His head struck the steering wheel or the back of his headrest as his body snapped back in his seat, causing a fatal blow to the base of his skull. The speed at impact was estimated at 158 mph.

Actually, the six-month investigation merely confirmed the findings of the Volusia County, Fla., medical examiner. But for thousands of fans - how many No. 3 bumper stickers do you see every day? - the report brings some closure.

''It puts a lot of stuff behind us,'' Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday. ''I'm probably way ahead of a lot of people. This was good for the fans. It helped a lot of people move on.''

The report also echoed what the third-generation driver has been saying all along: The broken seatbelt allowed his father to slam into the steering wheel at high speed.

''It's what we've been saying all along,'' said driver Sterling Marlin, whose Dodge bumped with Earnhardt's car as the fatal accident started. ''You hit the steering wheel at 160 mph; it ain't going to be good.''

Thirteen years ago, Marlin's car was sent into the first-turn wall at Bristol, and it exploded into flames at impact. Marlin climbed from the car, but only after suffering burns to his neck and face.

Guess who knocked him into the wall that day?

Dale Earnhardt.

Reach Don Coble at doncoble@bellsouth.net.