Jeff Gordon 'disappointed' with Goodyear tires at Bristol

While he isn’t complaining about Kyle Larson leading 411 laps and winning the race, Jeff Gordon didn’t like what he saw from the tires at Bristol. I’m not sure anyone likes what happened with the tires at Bristol, but NASCAR and Goodyear have to do something.

Bristol is a high-speed half-mile oval. The action that should be happening on that track versus what we actually see on race day are two completely different things.

Jeff Gordon was asked about tires at the post-race press conference. Does he prefer what he saw on Sunday or the heavy tire wear that happened in 2024? He gave a nuanced answer.

“I mean, I am a little disappointed in today with the tire, I’ll be honest,” the Hendrick vice chairman said. “There was no fall-off and no wear. We all thought there was going to be tremendous wear, and there wasn’t.

“But at the same time, I don’t like what happened last year either. I want to say this: Goodyear has a tough job. I think this car, we have a heavy car. Just stock cars in general. We have these high-bank tracks, heavy loads, abrasive surfaces. There’s just a lot of things that are very difficult for them to do the things that they do to make a tire that’s durable and perform well.

“To ask for them on top of that to have a tire that falls off and wears but doesn’t wear too much, that’s a tall task. I don’t envy them on that.”

Jeff Gordon doesn’t want repeat of Indy disaster

Of course, Jeff Gordon has been through a lot in NASCAR. He was involved in that horrible Indianapolis race where tires were being destroyed in just a handful of laps. So, it isn’t an easy solution, at least if you are focusing on just tires.

“I went through the Indy debacle. You were ten laps pitting, cautions, and that’s not good,” Gordon continued. “Last year I thought it was, while probably entertaining for you in here, you know, it just completely — it took things out of the driver’s hands too much I felt like.

“You could say if you wanted the drivers managing it, I don’t think he was. Running two seconds off the pace is not what I think we want in NASCAR to manage a tire. So, yeah, I would take this one over. I am biased, but I would take this over that. But I still was disappointed to see how many — how few cautions and how little fall-off there was today.”

That 2008 Brickyard 400 showed the most extreme version of what severe tire wear can do. Last year at Bristol was probably too much, considering how slow drivers had to go to preserve tires.

When NASCAR had Goodyear make these option tires and softer tires for short tracks, it was always to avoid the real issue. This Next Gen car is horrible in dirty air and that means it is horrible on short tracks. On a half-mile track, it’s nothing but dirty air.

As these new tires have started to improve the short track racing a little bit, fans have enjoyed it. I think that it has also been used by NASCAR as a cop out, a way to avoid the real issue at hand.

There is a fatal flaw with the aero on this car in dirty air. These tires are just Band-Aids at best. They tried taking off splitters and messing with the aero already. It didn’t help. Tires help a little bit. At this point, the only thing that has yet to be tried outside of a car redesign is the horsepower.