The Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway on Saturday was a big hit with Austin Dillon reaching Victory Lane. Drivers loved the racing product, and three-time champion Joey Logano even called out the track as a racing purist’s favorite. Getting back to his studio, Denny Hamlin detailed on Actions Detrimental how the experience could have turned out even better.
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Asking for more tires, he said, “I do think one more set would be the right number, just simply because then it would allow the field to have more options. Obviously, you would like to see the ability for them to pit once in Stage One, the option to pit twice or three times in the second stage, and then the option to pit twice or three times in the third stage.
“What that would do is create varying strategies. You would see tons of passes simply because I think the field, three-quarters would be on one strategy, a quarter would probably be on the other, and trying to figure out which is the right one.”
Hamlin finished the race in 10th place. Sounding extremely pleased with how the race went down, he lauded Goodyear for bringing tires that were far better than what is usually used on the Next Gen car in short track races.
Drivers had been able to make passes inside 15 or 20 laps this year, whereas they had to sit behind competitors for nearly 30 or 40 laps last year. Hamlin pointed out the same and hoped that these same tires are brought to the Cup Series race at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway as well.
Brad Keselowski had called for additional tires from NASCAR
Even before the race went down at Richmond, RFK Racing co-owner Brad Keselowski had questioned whether teams would have enough sets of tires to go through. But NASCAR never had any plan to approve additional sets. Together with Goodyear, it decided that it would provide eight sets of new tires along with the ones that teams used to start the race.
Keselowski told NBC Sports, “We’re in trouble. I might be wrong. Maybe something will change, and we’ll get into the nighttime, and the tires will extend their life cycle more than what we’ve seen in practice. But right now it does not look good.”
Several other drivers expressed similar concerns in light of the abrasive racing surface and the soft tire compound. But the issues during the race were at a minimum. Teams managed their allotments and adopted long-run strategies to stretch the tire usage.
Hopefully, the sanctioning body will see the logic in the words of Hamlin and provide a higher number of sets in the future.
