Unusual tire wear from the type of right side tire not seen thus far this year in the NASCAR Cup Series definitely had an impact on Saturday night’s Bristol Night Race, which was also the final race of the opening round—the Round of 16—of the Cup playoffs.
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But one of the first drivers to exit the race, Chase Elliott (who left early, not because of tire wear but because he was wrecked), isn’t quite ready to place any blame on the new right side tire compound that Goodyear gave teams for the race.
“I think it’s fine,” Elliott said of the soft right front tire compound, which is the first time Goodyear brought such a compound to a race this year.
“The tough thing that I see, and I haven’t had any time to digest this, and we just crashed, but I’m not really sure what to think of now. My quick thought is if you give these teams an opportunity to set the cars up knowing that the tire wear was going to be this high, you would probably see an entirely different race. So let’s not blame the tire yet.”
Goodyear initially gave each Cup team 11 sets of tires—nine for Saturday’s race, one for practice, and one for qualifying (which most teams used in the first part of the race). However, as teams began to have issues early on in the race, NASCAR asked Goodyear to give teams one additional set of tires to be used in the 500-lap race.
Here’s how NASCAR described the tire wear issue
According to NASCAR.com, the high wear on the right-side tires became apparent around Lap 25 when polesitter AJ Allmendinger dropped from the lead to fifth place and reported a concern with the right-side tires to his team on the radio. A few laps later, the No. 16 Kaulig Racing driver pitted, and many others followed, including multiple playoff drivers such as Austin Dillon and Joey Logano.
Teams seemed to get a better handle on tire wear heading into Stage 2 and adjusted their strategies accordingly. The final restart, which decided the winner of the race, also came down to tires as Christopher Bell, with four fresh tires, drove by underneath Carson Hocevar and Zane Smith with two tires and won the race.
Alex Bowman fell from P3 to P8 as he struggled during the restart on old, worn-out rubber, ultimately putting an end to his playoff hopes.
