By David Morgan, Associate Editor
As crew chief Harry Hogge once said in the movie Days of Thunder, “Tires is what wins races,” and that was never truer than in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
For the first time in three years, the spring date on the half-mile high banked oval in East Tennessee was back on its concrete surface and back to the Bristol we all know and love, but this time around the NASCAR Cup Series teams and drivers would have to go into gladiator mode to make it out of Sunday’s race in one piece.
Always a battle, Bristol’s surface threw something new into the mix on Sunday as the resin-treated concrete acted like a cheese grater on the Goodyear tires and instead of the track taking rubber, it became a ticking time bomb on when the tires would give up.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.
Like clockwork throughout the day, mostly near the end of a run, drivers would start dropping like flies when their tires gave way, either forcing them to pit road for a fresh set or in some cases, landing them into the wall.
For those drivers that could manage their tires the best, like winner Denny Hamlin and runner-up Martin Truex, Jr., they came out on the good end of the day, surviving the mayhem with great finishes to take back home, while others weren’t so lucky.
“It was challenging,” Hamlin said. “A different kind of challenge, for sure. Certainly not something we’ve had to do for a very long time in managing tires.
“Lesson learned early on. I kind of ran a certain pace, a certain line, wore my tires out. From that point on made some adjustments internally. He made some adjustments to the car that allowed me to just manage it from that point on.
“Once it got into that tire management type of race, certainly my history in late models where you had to do that big-time certainly paid off.”
Hamlin noted that while the tire wear may have been a bit excessive, Sunday was a bit of a throwback to old school NASCAR in that equipment management made a big difference.
“Do we want them wearing out in 40, 50 laps? No. That’s probably a little bit on the low end, for sure. But certainly this is what happens when you get tire wear. There’s comers and goers. I guarantee you, surely you guys at NASCAR have sent out a stat pack of all the passes that happened today. There was times where I was leading, Ty is just pressuring me. I’m like, No, it’s not time. Go ahead….
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