Conditions during Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying rounds at Bristol Motor Speedway appeared eerily similar to one year ago before the cars ever took the track.
Afterward? It was sheer deja vu.
Drivers chewed through tires like they were made of papier-mache, and several series regulars shared their concerns about a potential repeat of the 2024 spring Bristol race.
“(It feels like) clockwork for me,” Austin Cindric, driver of the Penske Racing No. 2 Ford Mustang, told Frontstretch. “It took me 40 laps in the race until I corded a right front (last year), and I did 40 laps today in practice before I corded a right front.”
Cindric qualified 21st for Sunday’s Food City 500 with a speed of 126.662 mph.
Typically, after a few laps on a track, rubber wears into the surface from the friction between the tires and the track surface itself. The Cup tires, though, aren’t shaving off and wearing into the track as they’re expected to. Instead of the rubber shaving off, it’s breaking off in chunks, leaving corded tires and a cold, rough track surface in its wake.
When asked about the science behind the tires breaking off in chunks as opposed to the typical wear, drivers were open about their knowledge on the subject.
“I don’t know, to be honest with you,” John Hunter Nemechek, driver of the No. 42 Toyota for Legacy Motor Club, said. “But … it is chunking as opposed to laying rubber down.”
Cindric made it clear he didn’t necessarily understand what the scientific explanation of the issue is.
“The glasses may make me look smart, but I would have told you to do something different going into this weekend if I knew that,” Cindric said. “It seems to be a weather thing. I feel like there’s been three different types of track prep since we’ve been here, and it’s obviously pretty consistent throughout the field.”
Another huge problem with the sheer amount of tire fall off drivers experienced in practice tends to reveal itself at the start of the race. Normally, each driver has a sense of what kind of setup it’s going to take to find speed at any given racetrack. Every car on the track will have a similar setup, with only minor differences in suspension tuning separating one car from another.
Now, though, drivers have no earthly idea what kind of setup will bring the best speed early on in Sunday’s race, which will inevitably lead to multiple cars driving completely differently from one another on a half-mile track. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that equals: cautions.
However, there is a bit of hope. Temperatures at the track are forecast to be about 10 degrees warmer on Sunday, meaning that the surface temperature of the track itself should be a bit higher, barring any precipitation. Drivers are optimistic, but as Chris Buescher put it after practice:
“I feel like I have more questions right now than I have answers.”
Alex Bowman will lead the Cup Series to the green flag for Sunday’s Food City 500 at 3 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1.
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.