Bob Pockrass
FOX Motorsports Insider
There wasn’t too much drama Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
That could be attributed to Kyle Larson’s sheer awesomeness. It could be because of the bizarre way the tires reacted to the surface, which seemed to be different from their reaction just the day before.
It is probably a little bit of both.
But there’s nothing anyone can do about Larson. He seems to thrive at the track no matter if it’s in a truck, Xfinity car or a Cup car. He won the Cup race on Sunday, a day after capturing the Xfinity race and two days following a second-place finish in the trucks.
So no doubt, Larson is good at Bristol, and it can’t just be said that it’s a Next Gen car thing for him.
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NASCAR, Goodyear and the teams, though, need to get a handle on the tire.
During the Cup practice session on Saturday, teams saw excessive tire wear. It was the kind of wear that was concerning because it appeared that the tires wouldn’t last 50 laps and potentially could fail with little warning.
NASCAR put additional PJ1 TrackBite in the corners Sunday morning prior to the Cup race. PJ1 TrackBite is a formulated resin that acts differently than traditional resin. The application on Sunday was the first since the initial one Thursday at the track.
And instead of managing tires and cars slipping and sliding, Larson led 411 of the 500 laps.
Was that the reason for the change? Were the higher temperatures the key?
“Today we had a lot of direct sunlight on the track, so with that comes a bit more track temp,” Larson crew chief Cliff Daniels said. “We had a fresh application of PJ1.
“It’s crazy to think that the margin is that small between the tires holding up and having enough temp in them to activate whatever the juices are that makes it work out and not shred them like it did yesterday.”
NASCAR, the teams and Goodyear have been asking those questions since the bizarre race a year ago, when the track didn’t take rubber and drivers rode in fear of blowing tires.
They only rode in fear Sunday for about 50 laps, and once drivers realized that tire wear wouldn’t be an issue, they picked up the pace and widened out the preferred groove. As a result, we got a 500-lap Bristol race with only three cautions — two of them for the stage breaks.
“I am a little disappointed in today with the tire, I’ll be honest,” said Larson’s boss, Hendrick Motorsports Vice Chairman Jeff Gordon. “There was no fall-off and no wear. We all thought there was going to be tremendous wear, and there wasn’t.”
Saying Goodyear has a tough job would be an understatement for Bristol (a high-banked 0.533-mile concrete oval), and Gordon feels the car contributes to the challenge.
There are no tire tests currently planned this year for Bristol, but that wouldn’t preclude NASCAR from adding one.
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“We have a heavy car,” Gordon said. “Just stock cars in general [when] we have these high-banked tracks, heavy loads, abrasive surfaces, there’s just a lot of things that are very difficult for them to do … to make a tire that’s durable and perform well.”
Larson indicated that a year ago, all the drivers and teams were caught off guard and learning on the fly. Now, they knew to proceed with caution.
“You saw in the first 25 laps, the whole field was single file,” Larson said. “I’m curious if fans would have thought that was exciting if we just rode in a train for 500 laps around the bottom while running 50 percent and all still wearing our tires out about the same time anyway.
“I just believe it’s more exciting when you can let the drivers push and run closer to the edge of making mistakes.”
Obviously, Larson was able to push. And he could get around slower cars at times with a little bit of ease.
“Me, in the lead, I don’t want to get my stuff too hot to when I catch traffic. I can’t pass lappers [then],” Larson said. “I think that’s why Denny [Hamlin] and I were still able to lap a lot of cars because we still did a good job managing our tires.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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