NASCAR, Goodyear Forced To Swap Bristol Motor Speedway Tires In Overnight Move

NASCAR and Goodyear are being forced to change the right-side tires for both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series after the current tire failed to lay rubber down on the surface at Bristol Motor Speedway, officials said Friday afternoon.

Race teams need the tracks to “rubber in” particularly at concrete tracks like Bristol – otherwise, the surface simply chews up the tire compound after only 15-30 laps.

“You can see the racetrack just isn’t rubbering in,” Kurt Busch said. “It’s more like they’re turning into powder, which is what we had a few years ago at Indianapolis.”

Goodyear officials monitored tires throughout Friday morning’s practice sessions and ultimately worked with NASCAR to implement a backup plan: Bringing in approximately 1,200 tires that were to be used at Fontana and Kansas from a warehouse in Charlotte.

The tires won’t arrive until later today – too late for the Nationwide Series teams to practice on them before Saturday’s race.

Sprint Cup teams will get one set of the new right-side tires before a pair of practice sessions on Saturday and will have them for the race.

Nationwide teams will qualify on the old tires and even start the race on them. NASCAR will then call a competition caution at Lap 25 to allow teams to change to the new tires.

The tires that will be used for both races are made up from the same compound that was used at Bristol last August. After those races, though, teams requested a different tire that have more grip but would wear faster.

Goodyear officials said they don’t know why the current tire failed to put down rubber on the track.