Bristol Motor Speedway is an interesting track in that there is always action to be had. However, you also had a playoff cut-off race here, which normally changes things.
Saturday night (Sept. 17) saw the NASCAR Cup Series take on Bristol Motor Speedway for 500 laps. Ultimately, this race will be remembered for the sheer number of mechanical issues.
Admittedly, drivers, teams and fans have been spoiled in recent years by the level of reliability in Cup. Mechanical failures just aren’t as common in any major series these days. The Next Gen car threw a wrench in those plans.
As you know, multiple drivers suffered steering rack/power steering failures Saturday night. Both 23XI Racing drivers (Bubba Wallace and Ty Gibbs) suffered failures on the same lap, which is completely insane. Martin Truex Jr. had a similar failure, and I think Aric Almirola did as well, although the broadcast didn’t truly make that clear.
These failures were somewhat strange. On both Truex and Wallace’s cars, the seal busted and leaked fluid all over the inside of the front tires, something that I cannot recall ever seeing before.
Once again, NBC Sports was there with an excellent CGI graphic showing off the steering rack and where they believed (correctly) where the failure occurred. Right after that, the cameras caught the 23XI Racing attempting to put a new steering rack in Gibbs’ car. The rare example of live TV providing an instantaneous payoff.
Knowing that everything in these Next Gen cars are bought off the shelf these days, the possibility of a bad batch of parts is very high these days. We’ve seen this before. Probably the best example was the 2002 EA Sports 500 at Talladega, where all four Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets, plus the MB2 Motorsports Pontiacs of Johnny Benson and Ken Schrader, suffered engine failures in what is the most recent caution-free race in the Cup Series.
In addition to the steering issues, you also had a bunch of tire problems. Drivers such as Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, JJ Yeley, Brad Keselowski, Harrison Burton (multiple times), Denny Hamlin and others had tire issues.
In Blaney’s case, his tire failure morphed into an issue with the rear toe link that ultimately led to him going behind the wall. I have no clue why the team kept the car on pit road so long before going behind the wall since they had already satisfied the minimum speed requirement. Then again, he finished 70 laps behind the next car (Wallace). Going behind the…
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