Where has all the tire wear gone in the NASCAR Cup Series?
With the exception of a happy accident this March at Bristol Motor Speedway, tire wear on short tracks has essentially been nonexistent in NASCAR thus far in 2024. As a result, the amount of side-by-side competition has greatly suffered.
As the Next Gen car has narrowed the gap between teams, Goodyear’s inability to produce said wear has been exposed. Last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, for example, the top 36 cars in qualifying were all within a few tenths of a second. Well, 50-plus laps into a run, they were still within a few tenths of each other.
That sounds great on paper, but the outcome of competition that close? It creates boring racing. Since everyone runs the same speed an entire run, it makes passing almost impossible.
Obviously, Goodyear isn’t the only one to blame in how bad the Next Gen racing has gotten at short tracks and even road courses. But creating tires that wear out over a long green-flag run would be the easiest way to fix the problem.
In the 70-plus years of NASCAR racing prior to the Next Gen car, managing tires was what made or broke your afternoon. You could see someone rocket to the front, abusing their setup the whole time, only for a wily veteran who saved their tires to blow by them later in the run. A huge component of the racing was seeing who could go the fastest while also not using their tires up.
Those days are gone now, as every driver can go as hard as they want to with no fear of using up the tires at most tracks. Denny Hamlin said on his podcast Actions Detrimental this week that because of this development, NASCAR has not only created a flock of cars that are identical but also a generation of drivers who are identical.
It’s almost like the tires have become too good. Since there’s no risk of your equipment coming apart, pretty much everyone can manage the chassis setup they have. And when everyone is running the same speed, how in the world are you going to be able to pass?
The excitement on Sundays has turned lifeless as a result at several tracks iconic to NASCAR history: Martinsville, Richmond Raceway, even Watkins Glen International. And, like clockwork, after seemingly every one of these races we are treated to a multitude of podcasts, articles, etc., complaining about the lack of tire wear. Everyone from drivers to crew chiefs is practically begging Goodyear to get more aggressive.
Of course, there…
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