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How Bristol threw NASCAR teams an unexpected curveball

For the second time in 18 months, NASCAR Cup Series teams thought they knew what to expect at Bristol Motor Speedway and were quickly proven wrong.

“Chaos is probably a good word to start with,” said Adam Stevens, the crew chief of race winner Christopher Bell. “The craziest thing to me is after the practice we all had, some wear but not like what we saw today. I would have bet my house that it would have been a long-run normal Bristol, run through the stages no problem. That was not the case, and it was apparent very early on that first run that we were going to have problems. I’m not saying it’s not fun to run a race like that, but it would be a little bit more fun if you expected it, and after practice, I did not.

“It’s obviously cooler today, but it’s not like it’s cold, and the track temp was probably above the threshold that I would have guessed would have produced a race like that. I would say us and 99 percent of the field were not optimized to that. It was fun, though.”

Saturday night looked eerily similar to the events of the spring 2024 race at the same track when excessive tire wear made its presence known shortly after the green flag. It resulted in a tire management race for drivers on the racetrack while crew chiefs worked on the fly to change the strategy to match fuel runs and available tire sets. Along the way, the pace slowed and the action became so frantic that at times it was hard to follow.

The pace might have slowed, but the action was plentiful. Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images

AJ Allmendinger, the polesitter Saturday night, was among the first to experience an issue. Austin Dillon, a playoff driver, wasn’t far behind. And then, less than 40 laps into the race, pit road was overflowing with green flag pit stops.

“It was a surprise to all of us,” Denny Hamlin said. “In retrospect, I knew on the second lap. I came off the corner, had a really tight moment, and I felt the right front kind of start to shred. But I just thought, ‘Well, we tightened up too much overnight.’ But that’s the same exact feeling that I had at the beginning of the spring race in ’24. So, it was destined to be there from lap 2.”

Hamlin won the spring race in 2024. On that day, it appeared the veteran drivers who have experience saving their equipment and running tire management races were the class of the field. However, Hamlin was not as lucky Saturday night and struggled throughout the night, eventually done in by an incident that also saw the right-front wheel come off the car.

The spring 2024 race did not give way to similar events in the fall race. There were hardly any tires that fell off, and the race was given low marks for the lack of passing and being less than optically pleasing. And it was more of the same when the series was at Bristol earlier this year.

Goodyear brought a new, softer right-side tire for the Saturday night race. It is the first time it’s been used in competition this year. The left-side tire was a familiar one, having been run at Bristol in the last few races.

“It has nothing to do with the tire,” Austin Cindric said. “It’s all temperature-based.”

The air temperature at the start of the night was around 71 degrees. But the track temperature was around 89 degrees, according to a Goodyear spokesperson.

“There was a lot that happened tonight,” Brad Keselowski said. “First, Goodyear, the tire worked. The temperature dropped to the threshold, and we got a tire wear race. It’s so freaking … I don’t know, there is some scientist somewhere that could have a big study on this one – how a five-degree swing of track temp changes it so dramatically. But I thought it was actually a really good race because of the tire wear. The bottom was dominant. A lot of bump-and-run passes. It felt like Bristol from 1995 in that regard.”