What Happened?
The Food City 500 returned to Bristol Motor Speedway’s concrete surface for the first time since spring 2020 on Sunday (March 17) and Denny Hamlin bested the field, taking home his first win of the season.
The race came down between Hamlin and his teammate Martin Truex Jr. as they worked their way through lapped traffic. Truex briefly took the lead with under 20 laps left, but Hamlin jumped back to the front for good on lap 484.
Just like last week, the Toyotas, specifically from Joe Gibbs Racing, led the majority of the race. This week, though, one Toyota seemingly led significantly more than the rest. Ty Gibbs looked poised to score his first NASCAR Cup Series victory until he began having tire issues with around 76 laps to go.
What Really Happened?
Okay. Maybe I missed a few details. Gibbs and the No. 54 team were not alone with their tire issues. Everybody — let me say again — everybody had tire problems.
A rash of cautions in the opening stage masked major tire issues until the first longer green flag run of the day. Kyle Busch drove through the field and nearly to the lead when he suddenly started dropping positions. First Busch, then Hamlin, then polesitter Ryan Blaney and more until Busch spun out. At the pit stops, tires all up and down pit road showed lots of wear.
An odd game of “how slow can you go” commenced in stage two, as the track turned into a mini-superspeedway while drivers fought to maintain position while milking the tire life.
By the time the final stage rolled around, drivers knew how hard they could push, and the Joe Gibbs Racing cars looked like they could push the hardest with less repercussions. That all changed in the final 80 laps.
To this point, the game of tire roulette began around 50 laps into a run and resulted in a yellow flag. Toward the end, however, drivers managed to hang on to the car without crashing, but just barely by creeping around the racetrack.
Drivers tried to stay out as long as they could without pitting, anticipating a caution. They all gave up so much time trying to hold out that maybe some should have tried to pit early.
Because of this extreme tire wear, the race came down to who could manage their tires the best. The cars at the top of the pylon at the end of the day all had drivers with tire management experience.
Hamlin, who has long advocated for more tire falloff, won the race. Veterans Truex and Brad…
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