What NASCAR, drivers and Goodyear said about Bristol tire wear

BRISTOL, Tenn. — 500 laps of high tire wear on the high banks of Bristol drew reactions from NASCAR Cup Series drivers and officials with NASCAR and Goodyear.

From the get-go post-race Sunday, NASCAR was quick to praise what happened.

“We certainly had some anxiety around tire wear but, all in all, I think that was the one of the best short track races I’ve ever seen,” said John Probst, the Chief Racing Development Officer for NASCAR, in a post-race media availability.

Goodyear’s Greg Stucker said Sunday that the wear was “too drastic,” adding the tire was the same as in the fall race.

What did drivers think?

Denny Hamlin, winner

“That’s what I grew up here doing in the short tracks in the Mid Atlantic, South Boston, Martinsville. Once it became a tire management race, I really liked our chances.”

Of the top-5 longest-tenured full-time NASCAR Cup Series drivers, three of them bested the field Sunday. Hamlin stood tall, just ahead of fellow 2006 rookie classmate Martin Truex Jr.

As Clint Bowyer, another 2006 rookie classmate, stated in the FOX booth, Hamlin believed it called back to what racing was like when he first came into the Cup Series.

“Do we want them wearing out in 40, 50 laps? No. That’s probably a little bit on the low end, for sure. But certainly this is what happens when you get tire wear. There’s comers and goers,” Hamlin said. “There was times where I was leading, Ty is just pressuring me. I’m like, ‘No, it’s not time. Go ahead.’ That’s how it used to be. It really used to be that way.”

Chris Gabehart, Hamlin’s crew chief

“Honestly, while it’s hard on us, yes, it’s supposed to be hard. You’re supposed to see these guys struggle. You’re supposed to see the 25th-place car look like a mess, and the team’s trying to figure out how to rebound and rally, help him understand where this run management didn’t work or the leader is running too hard this run. Tell your driver, You weren’t in the lead this time, this happened, let him adjust inside.”

“It’s supposed to be hard. This is not supposed to look easy. I think this is what you see what you make it hard.”

Martin Truex Jr., finished second

“Yeah, I guess this tire management thing fit into my wheelhouse here at Bristol. Man, the difference was just coming out of the pits so far behind Denny. I had to use mine up more on the last run. The last four, five laps of the race, was cord. I gave it a hell of an effort.”

Brad Keselowski, finished third

Keselowski was the third of the three aforementioned veterans. He is the fifth longest-tenured full-time Cup Series driver, behind Kyle Busch (2005), Hamlin and Truex (’06) and Joey Logano (2009).

“It was interesting. Like a little short track race. You go to any of these local short tracks, that’s how you have to race. Have take care of your stuff. It’s refreshing. It’s different. I like that, that it takes something different every week. That’s what makes Cup so hard. You go in every week, some weeks you drive ’em till you burn ’em down, this week you got to take care of ’em.  It was fun.

There was a lot of discipline required and it was a fun race, to be honest, because you just had to be so smart behind the wheel. It would bite you in a heartbeat and you had to have a good setup. I think we had a good setup and tried to run the smartest race I could.

I thought it was fun. It’s different. Variety is the spice of life.”

Alex Bowman, finished fourth

Bowman first cut his stock car teeth in the ARCA Menards Series. He won in his first two starts in 2011. Then, in 2012, he earned four wins, 11 top-5 finishes and 13 top-10s and leading the most laps of any driver during the 19-race season, ultimately finishing fourth in points to Cup Series competitor Chris Buescher.

Sunday went right back to those days.

“That was something I was really good at when I first went stock car racing. In the East Series and ARCA, you don’t have a lot of sets of tires. That was something I excelled at and I feel like I was able to apply that today. In the Cup Series, we run hard every single lap all race these days. Kind of fun to go back to that. Maybe too far back to that. But glad we ended up on the right end of it.”

Kyle Larson, finished fifth

“I thought eventually some rubber would lay down. But after the second stop, we realized we were gonna have to manage. I was waiting for a long run. Then we got the penalty and got the long run. Then we somehow shuffled around to fifth. I hope I never have to run another race like that again but it was fun to run one time.”  

Larson, a surprisingly sharp critic at first, walked back what he said Tuesday. He reportedly told RACER’s Kelly Crandall he believed the wear was “a little to extreme” but that “you can’t deny it was a fantastic race.”

John Hunter Nemechek, finished sixth

Nemechek has one full NASCAR Cup Series season under his belt but looked like a veteran Sunday — likely indicative of the six Craftsman Truck Series seasons and three seasons of Xfinity Series starts under his belt.

And his late model upbringing.

” I was joking with the guys that it’s just an oversized Pensacola with tire wear. I grew up short track late model racing – places that you had to manage tire wear till the end of the run. We were able to do so.”

Chase Elliott, finished eighth

“It was a better race. It was pretty fun from my seat. Normally, you could just bury the car into the corner so far and you don’t ever really get beat by guys with tires that bad. But you could just fall off a cliff there with the way that was. It was like racing at a really old, worn out short-track. It was a lot of fun. I think there was probably a little better balance somewhere up there, but I had a good time.” 

Josh Berry, finished 12th

“I’m really kind of speechless on that part, but I thought we did a good job of managing everything. We made some adjustments at the end which seemed to cause the cording a little bit sooner and that kind of tied our hands a little bit towards the end, but, all in all, it was a great effort. I hate that we didn’t get a top 10, but it was a positive day and, honestly, with everything going on it was a lot of fun.”

Berry later reposted Dale Earnhardt Jr’s social media post stating, “I loved everything about that race today.”

Chase Briscoe, finished 13th

 “What a crazy race. This is by far the most bizarre race I’ve probably ever been a part of just with trying to not go hard at all and trying to save your tires. You’d feel good and then they would all just go at once and they’d be blowing. It was definitely weird just how you had to run the race. It was a cat-and-mouse game, which I think would be really fun if you didn’t have to worry about the tires blowing and coming apart. 

“I don’t mind trying to save tires, but we can’t have the tires just coming apart like that. It would be fun if we fell off two or three seconds and you didn’t have to worry about tires coming apart. I think that would be really fun, but when you’re trying to not make them blow up, that’s not very fun.”

Ryan Preece, finished 14th

“Yeah, I’d rather that than getting beat by somebody with a faster car that day. Now, I think that obviously they’ve got some work to do. The wear was excessive, but we maximized our day. I think if we didn’t have that tire come apart there at the end, we could have maybe finished top 10, but it is what it is.”

Preece was in the top-10 at the end of stages one and two but had a late-race tire issue that took him out of his first top-10 finish of the season.

Justin Haley, finished 17th

Haley ran inside the top-10 for much of the final stage but had a tire issue near the end. However, that didn’t dampen his spirits.

“I loved it. I don’t know what social media says, but as a driver I thought it was fun because you had to manage it. You weren’t all-out the whole time, so it was fun to have a major part in how the car ran.”

Tyler Reddick, finished 30th

Reddick wrecked early and had to limp around Bristol with an ailing car stuck multiple laps down. However, he still got to experience the high tire wear.

“It felt very different than anything I’ve ever seen at Bristol. It felt very old school. I had a lot of fun. I know we were multiple laps down but in the NextGen car, I’ve never been in the driver’s seat and thought, ‘I gotta take care of my tires, I gotta think 30-40 laps ahead.’ so it was great,” Reddick said on Door Bumper Clear.

Goodyear Response

Greg Stucker clarified on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that while the wear was extreme, it answered drivers’ calls for a tire with more aggressive wear that they have to manage throughout a run.

“And I think that’s what we saw,” Stucker said. “Now, I’m not advocating that we have tire wear as severe as we saw yesterday every race. But I think it’s a place where we could draw a line in the sand and I think we can learn from that.”

Stucker said the ball is in their court to figure out what changed as he said the tire didn’t change from fall to spring — and that the only difference was track crews laying down resin, not PJ1, for the spring race.

“It was a drastic departure from what we expected. The goal now is to just try to figure out why that happened but I think we’re approaching it it really positively.”

What will NASCAR do next?

Should NASCAR continue to put traction compound on the track, the resin is here to stay as the go-to choice.

“We came here and tested the PJ1 [with the wet weather package] and when we wet the track down, it was like oil. The cars had no traction. So when we came back here with the wet weather package, we used the resin not the PJ1,” Probst said.

Probst admitted fault on NASCAR’s part for giving teams one less set of tires than the fall.

A change to the tire allocation, aside, NASCAR seems to believe there isn’t much else to address.

“We actually gave that back during the race so we’ll go back and look at it all. There was anxiety around if they were going to make it on tires but, man, on the other end, I wouldn’t want to change much at all honestly. Just maybe give them more tires,” he added.