Almost everyone struggled to finish Sunday afternoon’s race at the half-mile Tennessean racetrack. Whether it was managing the tires, the lap time, or the line to ride on; every decision was crucial throughout the 500 miles of madness. For many drivers, it was something that they would not want to do ever again. But Denny Hamlin wasn’t one of them.
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Veteran journalist Jordan Bianchi was curious if Hamlin would want that to happen at every short track moving forward. Admitting that his response was about to be biased indeed, the #11 driver explained, “I think if you change absolutely nothing with the tire, nothing with the resin and we came back next week, many teams would make big adjustments with their cars to help with tire wear and driver will make adjustments.”
Although he would rather prefer the tire wear to not start as early as 40 or 50 laps in, the JGR veteran felt like the drivers would certainly get better at their game if they had to put their brains into the race and figure out how to sustain their tires and still stay up front.
Hamlin’s crew chief rallied behind the Toyota icon
There could have been two reasons why the track proved to be unmanageable for so many drivers. One; the temperature was 10-15 degrees higher than last year’s night race at Bristol Motor Speedway and two; NASCAR used resin instead of PJ1 as the traction compound in the bottom lane.
Whatever the reason might be, it’s evident from the post-race interviews that almost every driver struggled to pack speed and finish the race. However, Hamlin’s crew chief Chris Gabehart felt like that’s how it’s supposed to be. A NASCAR race should never look like a carefree evening walk at a park.
“While it’s hard on us, yes, it’s supposed to be hard. You’re supposed to see these guys struggle,” stated Gabehart. “You’re supposed to see the 25th-place car look like a mess. And the team’s trying to figure out how to rebound and rally and help him understand where this run management didn’t work or the leader’s running too hard this run and tell your driver, ‘Hey, you weren’t in the lead this time but this happened’ and let him adjust inside.”
But based on the fact that both NASCAR and Goodyear were clueless as to why it happened, we can assume that none of this anomaly was intentional. So what will the governing body do to tackle the situation? Unfortunately, that question remains unanswered for now.
