NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer admitted “we’re baffled,” after the lack of tire wear in last weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“We felt like we had a recipe there from the spring that gave us what we’re looking for in our short track racing, putting the tire management back in the driver’s hands,” Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “We’ve seen some great racing throughout the year. Richmond comes to mind. Watkins Glen just a week ago, with great tire fall-off. So the anticipation as we rolled into Bristol was we would see something very similar.”
It was clear from Friday afternoon’s practice session the weekend was shaping up to be a typical Bristol event with a lack of wear. The track took rubber, and Goodyear did not see the same excessive wear or cords on tires that teams dealt with in March. In that event, which was highly regarded by the industry, a tire run lasted less than 60 laps.
NASCAR tried to help by scraping off the excessive tire wear from the top lane before the Cup Series race and adding PJ1 to the bottom lane. It was a decision prompted by what was seen in the ARCA Menards, Craftsman Truck, and Xfinity Series races, where the top became dominant and rubber stayed on the track.
But the fall-off Saturday night was still only about a second. And that occurred on the long runs early in the race, when the track was still relatively clean.
Goodyear did bring the same tire compound back for Saturday that was used in the spring. There was a noticeable lack of passing, unlike the spring when drivers had to manage their tires, and eight lead changes to the 54 from the spring.
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“The goal was to at least put the cars in the bottom of the racetrack, give us two lanes to race,” Sawyer said. “We did see that throughout the event, they’d run at the bottom, middle, and top. So, we did have multiple grooves. What we didn’t have was tire wear. We’ll dive into that with our meetings today with our folks at Goodyear to see what maybe they have been able to come up with over the last couple of days in their meetings. Obviously, we were disappointed as a company for our fans but those are things we’ll learn from, figure out what happened, and get that corrected as we go forward.
“I think the big thing we have to keep in mind is these things happen throughout time. Whether it’s a race event or any sporting event, you’ll have a blowout every now and then. We just need to figure out what happened, how we’re going to correct it, and how to move forward because we have had some really good short track racing as well as road course racing this year, and Goodyear’s tire has really contributed a great deal to that so I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath water on this one.”
Denny Hamlin spoke at length on his podcast, Actions Detrimental, about the race and the tire wear. Although some of the discussion centered around the struggles of the Next Gen car on short tracks, Hamlin conceded that trying different tire compounds was the direction to go as the car won’t be rebuilt.
“It’s gotten better at some tracks, and it seems the tire is something certainly that shows fruit to better racing,” Hamlin said. “I want to be nice to Goodyear because they’ve done some things really in the last year that have been groundbreaking that certainly I believe shows promise in the future. They didn’t want to come up with a whole new compound – they wanted this race to play out more like the spring race, but the conditions weren’t the same, or the mixture wasn’t the same.
“So, it was a swing and miss, but I’m sure they’ll go to work on it. Surely, with the fan sentiment from the race itself, not being pleased with what they saw, they’ll come back with another tire yet.”
The next short track race is Martinsville Speedway on Nov. 3, which is also the final elimination race of the postseason that will determine the four championship contenders. Sawyer confirmed that Cup Series teams will run the tire that was the ‘option’ tire at Richmond Raceway, however it will be the primary tire for the Martinsville event.
There will be no changes for the Phoenix Raceway event. NASCAR does not want teams dealing with any unknowns on its championship weekend.
“What it’s going to take, and I’ve been a huge advocate of this, is you’ve got to wear out the left side tires,” Hamlin said. “The left side tires [are] the key to lap time fall because once you wear out the lefts, the more pressure goes on the rights, and here we go, now you’re going to wear out all four tires. So, you’ve got to create really grippy lefts.
“They are doing that for Martinsville; I’m really excited to see how the Martinsville race turns out. The softest compound ever created is going on the left side there and then an even softer right. There are good things on the horizon. It’s not all negative. There’s certainly some light at the end of the tunnel, so let’s be patient with it, let Goodyear do their jobs and figure this out, and make some adjustments for the next time.”