NASCAR‘s Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, has revealed his bewilderment over the minimal tire wear observed at Bristol. He has confirmed that he will address the issue with Goodyear for further investigation.
The unexpected lack of tire wear during the Round of 16 finale at Bristol was particularly striking, especially given the excessive tire degradation seen in the spring race held in March. Despite Goodyear providing the same tire compound for this event, drivers experienced virtually no tire wear this time around.
Observing the unusual occurrence, Sawyer said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that he was “baffled” to see the condition of the tire after the 500-lap race. As reported by NBC.com, he said:
“We’re baffled, to be perfectly honest.
BRISTOL, TENNESSEE – SEPTEMBER 21: Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota, and Kyle Larson, driver of the #5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, race during the NASCAR Cup Series Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on September 21, 2024 in Bristol, Tennessee. NASCAR witnessed an unusual lack of tire wear during the event.
James Gilbert/Getty Images
“We felt like we had a recipe there from the spring that gave us what we’re looking for in our short track racing, putting kind of the tire management back in the driver’s hands.
“We’ve seen some great racing throughout the year. Richmond comes to mind. Watkins Glen, just a week ago with great tire fall-off. The anticipation, as we rolled into Bristol, was that we would see something very similar. Obviously, we didn’t see that as the weekend started to unfold.”
Kyle Larson dominated last Saturday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway, leading 462 of the 500 laps and securing victory by a margin of seven seconds. The race featured eight lead changes. However, with minimal tire wear, drivers ran similar lap times, making it difficult to perform overtakes, a stark contrast to the March race, where numerous position changes occurred throughout the event.
Adding further, Sawyer stated that he would investigate the issue with Goodyear to gain a clearer understanding of what happened. He said:
“What we didn’t have is tire wear.
“We’ll dive into that with our meetings today with our folks at Goodyear to see what maybe they have been able to come up with over the last couple of days in their meetings. Obviously, we were disappointed as a company for our fans. Those are things we’ll learn from and we’ll figure out what happened and get that corrected as we go forward.
“I think the big thing we have to keep in mind is these things happen throughout time, whether it’s a race event or you go into any type of sporting event and, as you guys said earlier, you’ll have a blowout every now and then. We just need to figure out what happened, how we’re going to correct it and move forward because we have had some really good short track racing, as well as road course racing, this year. Goodyear’s tire has really contributed a great deal to that.”
