Sure it wasn’t a bad night at the office for the likes of Kyle Larson. The Bristol Night Race went on without much of a hitch on Saturday night. Well, maybe most of the drivers and the sport in general were expecting some tire wear. Well, they certainly didn’t have that at all.
Most were expecting to have a tire very similar to the Spring race at Bristol, which had a very aggressive fall-off. That race forced the teams to have to pit every 30 laps or so. That certainly didn’t play out this time. The race was dominated by Larson so much, that tire wear wasn’t even in play. It certainly looked like NASCAR didn’t bring the same tire, they said they were going to.
Whatever happened has had plenty of drivers wondering why there wasn’t any tire wear or major fall-off.
Where Was The Tire Wear? NASCAR Garage Puzzled
It is no secret that NASCAR and Goodyear have been experimenting on tires throughout the 2024 season. The big experiments have included running rain tires on the short tracks. They have also run a red option tire, which had good results. NASCAR officials and drivers alike were expecting to see something like the Spring race at Bristol in terms of the tire wear. What they got was far from it, and it has certainly had some of the higher-ups of the sport baffled this week.
NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer had plenty to talk about on his appearance on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday.
🤔 “We’re baffled to be perfectly honest.”
🛞 #NASCAR‘s Elton Sawyer addressed the lack of tire falloff and the application of PJ1 during the @ItsBristolBaby weekend.
More → https://t.co/WGRTG5gVtL pic.twitter.com/vlpaoQ2XBZ
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) September 24, 2024
” We’ve seen great racing throughout the year. Richmond comes to mind. Watkins Glen, just a week ago with great tire fall-off. The anticipation, as we rolled into Bristol, was that we would see something very similar. Obviously we didn’t see that as the weekend started to unfold,” Sawyer said, despite the track actually taking in rubber from the tires unlike the spring race. ” What we didn’t have is 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 days in their meetings. Obviously, we were disappointed as a company for our fans. Those are things we’ll learn from and we’ll figure out what happened and get that corrected as we go forward.”
Drivers Share Their Thoughts
Sawyer wasn’t the only person to share thoughts on the lack of tire wear this past weekend. Denny Hamlin had plenty to say on a new episode of the Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin podcast.
” What I hear is that where they make the racing tires is very antiquated versus how they make the new street Goodyear tires,” Hamlin said via his podcast. ” In the racing, I think that there is something with like unions and labor where they have to use more manpower… I’ve had people from my team, people from 23XI go and visit Goodyear and they were shocked at what they walked into.”
It was clear even before they raced on Saturday night that, the tires were far different from what they used in the Spring. Brad Keselowski and Alex Bowman both shared similar sentiments during practice and qualifying on Friday. Keselowski spoke with Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass about what he thought was going to happen with the tires, and he wasn’t sure what was going to happen.
Brad Keselowski said he has no clue what the tires will do Saturday night in the race. Said he felt no significant tire wear today in practice. pic.twitter.com/KWoqmIA9LV
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) September 20, 2024
” I don’t know what what in the world’s going on. We went from nothing and we could make 40 laps to thinking we can run 1000 laps on tires,” Keselowski said. ” I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on their… We’ll see if Jekyll or Hyde shows up.”
Keselowski certainly had his car set up for tire wear, and that didn’t happen and it cost him on Saturday as he was eliminated from the playoffs. Bowman on the other hand kind of expected there to be less tire wear than the Spring, and that was exactly what happened.
” I didn’t really see any unusual wear; they don’t fall off that much,” Bowman who won the pole for the race said. ” Definitely curious to the variable is there. I think we’re kind of normal Bristol again.”
Whatever NASCAR and Goodyear did certainly appears to have been in reverse. It certainly would have made for a very different race if there was more tire wear. Likely, Larson wouldn’t have been able to lead 462 laps. Having tire wear is better than not. Otherwise, you get these snooze fest races. Isn’t that the point to have tires wear out at some point during the run or am I wrong? I guess it’s back to the drawing board again with the tires.
