There’s some changes at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend
Kyle Busch has run 25 races at Bristol Motor Speedway in the NASCAR Cup Series alone. Of those, he’s gone to victory lane 6 times. The last win came in August 2017.
Heading into this weekend, Kyle Busch was looking for a certain feel. He’s on the pole but it’s different.
“For some reason, the traction compound doesn’t feel anything like I remember it last fall,” Kyle Busch said on Friday at the Bristol Motor Speedway media center.
“It’s not quite as grippy as I remember it being. For some reason, it’s just easy to slip out of, whether you step out of it with the back or the front.”
“And, it’s really slick up off the corners. That’s a different feel than we had last year.”
“I think that kinda creates that uneasy feeling coming off of it on the bottom of the race track.”
“We’ll see if the top lane gets going. By the end of the race, I think the top’s going to win.”
That was Friday. Everything has changed yet again since Friday.
They’ve since reapplied it
Now, there’s a new game plan. Since the Friday sessions, it’s been reapplied. This time they added a foot to the width. A full foot of it is applied to the apron alone. It looks bigger than it’s ever been.
In addition, some of the drivers said the bottom would struggle on restarts. The drivers requested that Bristol extended it’s application further down the straights. They did that as well.
Bristol modified the traction compound on Saturday ahead of the Xfinity race. They made it 5 feet wide instead of 4 feet in addition to extending it beyond the exit of the corner.
Kyle Busch made these statements on Friday before the NASCAR Xfinity Series race. That Xfinity race brought back Bristol of old. The entire field was glued to the bottom lane for most of the race. It was great!
In addition to a different application of the traction compound, Goodyear also brought a new right side tire.
“There’s definitely a difference with the new right side tire. That might be the feeling that’s just different than what I had last time. There’s something that’s just not a familiar feeling.”
Kyle Busch will start from a very familiar position at Bristol Motor Speedway. He’ll lead them to the green flag today.
When will the top come in? That just depends on how quickly Kyle Larson begins working to the top and cleaning off the track for the rest of the field.
Links
Kyle Busch | Bristol | NASCAR
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