NASCAR also went into Bristol Motor Speedway aiming for heavy tire wear; In the race, they didn’t get it
In practice at Bristol Motor Speedway, NASCAR Cup Series drivers wore tires to the cords in just a few dozen laps. Everyone was expecting a tire management race for Sunday.
However, the track temperature was significantly higher on Sunday, around 100 degrees. And with that change in weather, the extreme tire wear went away.
It wasn’t what NASCAR or Goodyear were looking for. And thus, the Bristol experimentation continues.
NASCAR is set to return to Bristol Motor Speedway in September. What’s the plan?
NASCAR’s tire plan for a return to Bristol
Every Tuesday, NASCAR has a meeting with Goodyear.
“We’ll see what plans they have and what they’ve been thinking about over the weekend on what direction we can go there,” NASCAR’s Elton Sawyer told ‘The Morning Drive’ via SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin are looking for Next Gen fixes
NASCAR explains their thought process with the PJ1 at Bristol Motor Speedway
Before the use of PJ1, the top groove became the dominate groove. The bottom was most unusable. And in the case of passing, drivers could move to the top as a way to block. NASCAR wanted to take that away.
“It’s a collaboration with the track, our drivers and we as NASCAR have a lot of say in that.”
“This past weekend, the PJ1 was put down on Thursday afternoon. On Friday, we had rain all day. In the Truck race you could see that the PJ1 was starting to wear.”
“We didn’t spray on Saturday morning, ran the Xfinity race. On Sunday, we collectively elected to spray the same footprint as Thursday night.”
“The goal by spraying, you want a one-groove racetrack for some portion of the event. Because if you don’t spray the bottom then the top becomes dominate and nobody can get to the bottom.”
“What we’re trying to do there is, you start at the bottom. That starts to wear off, then the cars will start to migrate to the middle of the track and the top groove.”
“We saw that on Saturday, cars were in multiple grooves. Sunday, it was mostly locked on the bottom. But, you did see some cars working their way to the top.”
“We’ll continue to learn. Bristol has provided some of the best racing we’ve had in the history of our sport.”
Bristol Results: April 13, 2025 (NASCAR Cup Series)
