William Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle questions Bristol tires: 'Don't even know what the goal is'

It is no secret that Hendrick Motorsports largely struggled at Bristol. William Byron’s crew chief, Rudy Fugle, is asking, “What is the point?” Following another severe tire wear race, do drivers and crew chiefs have legitimate complaints?

Since the Next Gen car was introduced in 2022, the short track and road course races have suffered. Passing is difficult, tires don’t really matter that much, and it takes a lot of what makes NASCAR racing great away.

When it comes to the short tracks, NASCAR has tinkered with different tires. At Bristol, William Byron and his teammates had to fight the severe tire wear. It worked better for some drivers than others.

Crew chief Rudy Fugle went on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio to talk about the race. He isn’t even sure what Goodyear and NASCAR are trying to achieve.

“The tires are acting as planned. Whoever made that decision, I’m not in those conversations, we were told that that was the plan,” Fugle explained. “They wanted it to be that kind of a race. I don’t know if it’s 100% a Goodyear thing. If we were running the old right side tire, we were going to be within a couple degrees of that threshold of tires wearing or not again, too. I really think we have to, somebody has to put the goal on the wall. What do we want the Bristol race to be, right? If you don’t know what that goal is, we don’t know what we’re trying to achieve. That’s what I, I don’t know, if you want my help, if anybody asks for my hlep, which sometimes they do or don’t. I don’t even know what the goal is.

“Are the fans wanting one of those two races? Or are they wanting 1995, you know? If they are wanting 1995, it wasn’t either one of those races in my opinion either. I was sitting in the grandstand as an 11-year-old kid watching in 1995, and it wasn’t like either of those races either. They were going all-out, they were just on the bottom, and bump and run was the thing, and whatever. If you want 1995, it’s not going to come from a Goodyear tire. It’s going to come from cutting up the race track and redoing the concrete back to 1995, and then trying to get, and I don’t even know if the car can produce that kind of racing, either. But that’s the first step.”

While I understand what Fugle is saying, he is also feigning ignorance a bit, if you ask me. The softer tires are to cut down on drivers dominating races. Like Kyle Larson leading 400+ laps in back-to-back races. They are to create more passing. It’s not to harken back to some bygone day 30 years ago.

“We’ve tried to rework the racetrack every which way we can since 2007, including put dirt on it, and still never made it like 1995,” William Byron’s crew chief continued. “So, somebody needs to put the goal on the wall, and then we need to get together to try to make Bristol the way somebody wants it to be. The way it used to be, where it used to be, the best race on the circuit, you couldn’t get night race tickets.

“If that’s what we want, we gotta put that on the wall and say, ‘That’s what we’re trying to achieve.’ We’re not trying to achieve 40 laps, and the tire is shredding and a mess. Whatever. It’s just, any of those things are fine. When we race, we line up and race, and every one of those types of races is challenging on the teams, the drivers, and we enjoy that challenge differently.

“You’d just like to know what to expect, but you know, they knew when they wanted to go to the moon, they said, ‘We gotta go to the moon, we need a rocket, we need a spaceship, we need a way to get in, we need a way to breathe out there,’ that was the goal. We don’t even know what the goal is, so when we determine what the goal is to make somebody happy, then we’ll try to go fight it. But I don’t even know what we’re trying to achieve.”

Again, it feels like Rudy Fugle is playing up his uncertainty on this topic. Softer tires have been introduced at multiple short tracks. It isn’t just Bristol. We have seen varying success with those tires, too. Richmond, Martinsville, and North Wilkesboro were all better races this year for the most part.

Hendrick Motorsports drivers finished P8, P12, P32, and P38 on Saturday night. It doesn’t take much to realize why William Byron’s (P12) crew chief would question it. What is the point of the tires? To create a race drastically different from what we have seen at Bristol recently.

The field on Saturday was stuck to the bottom groove. Bump and runs were key to making passes. That is, unless drivers burned up tires to make passes in the second lane.