Facing extreme tire wear, drivers “have no idea” what to expect at Bristol

With cooler temperatures again this spring, NASCAR’s Cup Series drivers have quite the challenge ahead of them at Bristol Motor Speedway. And Goodyear may want to load up their haulers with a spare set of tires…or two.

Practice quickly showcased noticeable cording and aggressive tire wear within 40 laps for most cars. Those battling tight conditions wore the right front down to nothing, while those battling loose conditions burned the left rear tire off. There seemed to be no escaping it, other than to back down the overall pace. Tire rubber was balling up at the top of the track as marbles and drivers did not want to come up off the bottom lane where the grippy PJ1 TrackBite was located (a synthetic resin that adds grip).

Last year’s Cup race at Bristol saw drivers unable to go much more than 35 to 40 laps for most of the race before the tires came apart, creating a wild event with an unusually high amount of green-flag stops and vastly different closing speeds throughout the field.

Denny Hamlin won that wild race and after practice for this year’s 500-lapper, he seemed surprised to be facing this ‘groundhog day’ situation. “Everything looks the same,” Hamlin told Prime Video. “Truthfully, I wouldn’t have expected it, but certainly it looks like the formula is striking again. So, yeah, it’s going to be an interesting race.”

While Hamlin was a little bit surprised, Brad Keselowski was clearly confused. “I don’t know,” he said. “We came here and tested a year and a half ago, and the tires wouldn’t go 25, 30 laps. So we thought we were really smart and we came back the next spring race and were prepared for that. And that’s what it did. And then, after last year’s spring race when the tires wore out, we came here with the 17 car [Chris Buescher] and tested and the same thing happened. And we came back thinking, okay, be ready for tire wear in the summer race. The tires could have run 200 laps, 300 laps. So, we have no idea. We really don’t.”

Keselowski said it’s like a “weekly science experiment” these days in NASCAR as “one small variable can change everything. And the tires — that’s not a small variable, that’s a big variable, and we’re seeing that in action.”

Corded Goodyear tires after several laps

Photo by: Lesley Ann Miller / Motorsport Images

Joey Logano was openly wondering what direction to go after practice, but unlike some, he expressed excitement for the many unknowns that he and the rest of the field faces.

“It seems like we have at least an idea of what can happen as we lived this story once last spring with the tire wear the way it is going down to the cords,” said Logano. “We can probably go back and try to figure out how to call the race the best way but we don’t exactly know if that is what it’s going to look like.

“And even the balance of your car … I don’t know. If this happens again tomorrow, we have an idea of what the balance was there (last year), but what if it doesn’t? Then you’re starting from square one again. A little bit unknown but hey, it makes it kind of fun. It’ll be interesting and we’ll have our hands full.”

Cleaning up rubber from excessive Goodyear tire wear

Photo by: Lesley Ann Miller / Motorsport Images

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. put down the single fastest lap in practice, but his crew chief warned him not to run more than 20 laps after seeing the tire wear on his first run.

“I felt like there was a decent amount of rubber from the Xfinity cars and not a lot of marbles,” he explained. “And then as we ran, I felt like maybe we picked the Xfinity rubber up and we threw down a lot of marbles and started wearing out tires there. So we’ll see if it gets better or worse this next practice session, and obviously a little warmer tomorrow and a little sunnier, so we’ll see how it goes.”