Goodyear to investigate 'drastic' tire wear at Bristol Motor Speedway

The story of the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway revolved around Goodyear, and the drastic tire wear we saw throughout the afternoon.

While it created some exhilarating racing, many around NASCAR believe it was too big of a jump, but a myriad of factors contributed to the change, according to Greg Stucker, Goodyear director of racing.

“I would agree [that] tire wear is always the goal. That’s what people wanted to see. It creates comers and goers and who manages tires the best. But we thought we were in a really good spot last year with the tire as we raced it in the fall and something is different now. So this is too drastic,” Stucker said, via Kelly Crandall of RACER. “We tested here last year with the intent to come up with a tire package that generated more tire wear — that was the request from NASCAR and the teams. “We feel like we had a very successful test. We feel like we had a very successful race in the fall of last year because we did exactly that. We ran a full fuel stop [and] definitely saw wear, but we thought it was spot on.

“So now we’re trying to understand what’s different — why is the racetrack behaving differently this weekend than what it did a year ago?”

Evidently, Stucker is of the opinion that the rubber was simply not adhering to the track, as it’s done in the past at Bristol.

“If you look up in the corners, the tire rubber is being worn off and it’s just not adhering to the racetrack,” Stucker added. “That’s why you see all the marbles up in the corners. And again, last August, it took rubber immediately. As is typical with concrete, you run around under caution it’ll pick it back up.

“We see that at Martinsville, we see that at Dover, we see that here. But immediately when we go back green, it lays back down and that’s just not happening.”

Per Stucker, the race package was the same, so the drastic change shouldn’t have taken place, so Goodyear is going to investigate what went wrong with the tires at Bristol.

“It’s the same [race] package. It’s the same tire combination,” Stucker explained. “Obviously, the difference is resin was placed on the lower groove instead of the PJ1. Yet I still think the racetrack should be taking rubber as it did last year. It took rubber immediately during that race.

“It’s still a bit of an unknown as far as why it’s not behaving the same — that being the racetrack. But that’s kind of what we know now. Obviously, everybody is kind of in the same boat but some guys are able to manage through it a little bit better than others. It’s still a tough situation, and we’re going to have to try and understand exactly what’s happening, what’s different, and adjust from there.”

Greg Stucker also highlighted that the Truck Race behaved as expected, so Goodyear believed the Cup Series was going to be fine on Sunday. That wasn’t the case tire-wise, although it did create a memorable afternoon at Bristol.