NASCAR has a short track problem on their hands.
Of course it’s not really a new problem. Ever since the Cup Series debuted their Gen 7 car back in 2021, racing on short tracks has been pretty boring.
The new car has made passing next to impossible, and with the cars all running nearly the exact same speed, you end up with a follow-the-leader race with not much passing and not much excitement.
Obviously that’s a problem for a series built on short tracks, and it was on full display this past weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
The high-banked, half-mile track has always been one of the best races of the NASCAR season. But since the introduction of the new car…well, it’s been flat-out boring.
Back in the spring, NASCAR and Goodyear teamed up to bring a new, softer tire to the race that would wear more and hopefully create more passing. And it worked during the spring race, when the tires wore out quickly and forced drivers to either slow down to conserve their tires or risk having a blowout midway through a run. Cars ran different speeds, there was passing, it was a decent race.
So Goodyear (allegedly) brought the same tire back for this past weekend’s night race, hoping for the same result. But they didn’t get it.
Kyle Larson ended up leading over 450 laps of the race en route to the win, passing was once again pretty much impossible, and the tires showed hardly any wear even after 130 lap runs. The result was one of the worst Bristol races I’ve watched in my nearly 25 years as a NASCAR fan, and a lot of disappointed – and angry – viewers.
So why the big change from the spring race to now, when Goodyear supposedly brought the same tire that wore so drastically the first time?
Well so far the only answer we’ve gotten is basically, “Hell if I know.”
NASCAR VP of competition Elton Sawyer spoke about this past weekend’s race on Sirius XM and basically said NASCAR and Goodyear have no idea why it was so bad:
“We’re baffled, to be perfectly honest. We felt like that we had a recipe there from the spring that gave us what we’re looking for in our short track racing, putting kind of the tire management back in the driver’s hands.
We’ve seen some great racing throughout the year. Richmond comes to mind. Watkins Glen, just a week ago with great tire fall-off. The anticipation, as we rolled into Bristol, was that we would see something very similar. Obviously, we didn’t see that as the weekend started to unfold.”
Always good to hear that they know the product sucks but have no idea how to make it better.
Sawyer said that NASCAR wasn’t happy with the race and would try to fix it going forward – but it sounds like their only solution right now is to try to fix it with the tires:
“Obviously, we were disappointed as a company for our fans. Those are things we’ll learn from and we’ll figure out what happened and get that corrected as we go forward.”
NASCAR fans, and even some drivers, have been begging NASCAR to put more horsepower in the cars to try to improve the racing. The Cup Series cars currently run 670 hp, but NASCAR doesn’t want to increase that because their argument is that it would make things more expensive for teams and for potential new manufacturers trying to enter the sport. (Although why would a new manufacturer enter the sport when the racing’s as shitty as it’s been lately?)
Denny Hamlin has been one of the most outspoken drivers on the subject, and this week he said that NASCAR was trying to use tires to fix an aero problem with their cars:
“It is a car problem. We are trying to fix it with tires because that’s the most economical way to fix it.”
Denny uses lap times to show just how little tire falloff there was at Bristol. 🛞 pic.twitter.com/GS7zg8wRX7
— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) September 23, 2024
Regardless of what the problem is or how they fix it, I just hope they fix it fast. NASCAR has ruined some of the best tracks they run all year, with places like Bristol and Martinsville consistently putting on some of the most boring races of the season.
Not great for a series built on short track racing.
