After Denny Hamlin’s 56th career win at one of the most tire-degrading speedways on the schedule, Darlington Raceway, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to the Tennessee mountains for Sunday afternoon’s Food City 500 in the border-straddling city of Bristol, Tenn.
That’s right: The drivers are leaving one tire-munching track for another.
It’s a real shame that Rockingham Speedway isn’t next week’s stop after Bristol because that would be a Mount Rushmore of rubber-chewing and rubber-spewing racing surfaces.
Of Darlington and Rockingham, former driver Ken Schrader was once asked how often a pit crew should change tires at the two gritty tracks. In typical Schrader fashion, he joked that teams should bolt on four new Goodyears after just pushing the car from the garage to pit road.
Those are three demanding, abrasive tracks where tire wear and tire management become major factors in either winning a race or letting a victory slip away like William Byron did last week, though that was largely a pit strategy snafu.
Byron’s team frittered around and found out that passing in dirty air is not easy in the Next Gen car, though the No. 12 Ford manned by Ryan Blaney had no problem picking them off and would have likely won if not for Kyle Larson’s spin off Turn 2 with four laps left for the final caution flag.
That came off the front nose of Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota, but race data showed Larson checked up way too aggressively off the turn after he saw Wallace’s teammate Tyler Reddick make hard impact with the wall.
Still, Larson’s overreaction and the No. 11 crew’s super-fast pit stop were enough to help Hamlin, the defending spring race winner at Bristol, score back-to-back victories.
This week should be a venture into the wild unknown for everyone because the tire-management race Hamlin won last March was due to Goodyear’s tires showing cords after about 45 laps on the high-banked, half-mile bullring. There was dire concern that Goodyear would run out of tires.
NASCAR decided to go with the same tires it had used the previous fall in 2023, but 15-degree cooler temperatures in the mountainous region created a buildup of rubber marbles as the track lost grip.
To no surprise, the three most-seasoned veterans who faced many tire-heat cycles as younger short-trackers — Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski — occupied the top three spots and demonstrated their skill in tire maintenance.
It was one of 2024’s best races, pitting older drivers using decades of experience against hard-charging hotshots who can blaze a single circuit around any track.
In all, the 500-lapper featured a series-record 54 lead changes on a short track, 3,589 passes under green (8.9 per green-flag lap) and just five drivers on the lead lap, the fewest since June 2004 at Dover.
In cooler temperatures in Saturday’s qualifying round, the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports driven by Alex Bowman toured the short track at 128.675 mph (15.836 seconds) to score his second pole this season and seventh of his career.
The Tucson, Ariz., native will be joined on the front row by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Larson, Hamlin and Blaney completed the top-five qualifiers.
Sunday’s temperatures are supposed to be in the low- to mid-60s.
Larson, the speedway’s most recent winner, did everything right last September by leading 462 laps, the most ever by a Hendrick Motorsports driver in a single race.
“To me, it’s the closest style to a dirt sprint car race although it’s a lot longer still,” said Larson. “Just the intensity, the aggression, the fast-paced style of that race, I’m comfortable with.”
His team members will hope to hit on the right setup, car balance and pit work again on the No. 5 Chevrolet.
But they will keep a keen eye on tires while they are at it.
–Field Level Media
