NASCAR Senior VP Names Bristol’s Dividing Display a ‘Blessing in Disguise’

The NASCAR Cup Series race at the Bristol Motor Speedway is considered to be one of the best short-track races in recent times and with good reason. So it’s no wonder that the management of the competition wants to cash in on it. The race has received mixed reviews from the drivers after the race but if planned well, tire wear is something that can be very well incorporated into these kinds of races and the need for higher horsepower or aero packages may not even arise.

One of the biggest issues that the drivers who left their cars had was the lack of information before the race. No one, not even Goodyear, expected tire wear of that level, which is why they had to appeal to get a new set of tires approved during the race. Senior VP of Competition for NASCAR, Elton Sawyer stressed this point in a recent interview on SiriusXM Radio.

Senior NASCAR executive didn’t expect Bristol to go the way it did

Bristol was just the first short track race of the season, and there are many more to come. Places like Martinsville and Richmond will draw a lot of attention after the race we saw on Sunday. For NASCAR to retain the fans’ intrigue in the sport, they will have to make sure that the Food City 500 was not a fluke. Considering that the events of the race took place by chance, the organizers may have a real job on their hands to replicate the same.

“What we need to do is learn from what we just experienced this past weekend, be able to bottle that up and be able to carry that to your Martinsville and carry that to your Richmond. It’s not easy. We didn’t walk into Bristol on Sunday morning having all this mapped out. It was a blessing in disguise to be able to experience that and work closely with Goodyear to…and commend them. We can’t say enough. The drivers have been asking for this. This is what they asked for and this is what they got for Sunday,” Sawyer said.

However, the tire wear cannot be as extreme as it was at Bristol. Some drivers came out of their cars after the race and said that the issue they had was the lack of information about the level of wear they would face.

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Communication about tire wear and track conditions will be the key going forward

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Elton Sawyer acknowledged that it was a bit too much to handle but believed that if it had been predictable before the race, things would not have been as bad. So for the upcoming short-track races, NASCAR will be looking to make more informed decisions while trying to maintain the quality of the racing. One can safely assume that there will be changes either to the tracks or the tire compounds to make things exciting for the fans and interesting for the drivers.

“Was it a little extreme? Sure, absolutely. I do believe that if we turned around and ran the race today with the same tires, the same conditions, the same settings, and the teams had the opportunity to make some final adjustments to their settings…the tire wear would be much better than what it was, I believe they would get upwards of the maybe even 60, 75 laps on a set of tires so you take all of that and you start digesting it, and we’ll get an answer to how we wanna move forward,” he added.

It won’t be long before the Cup Series is back on a short track. The weekend after the upcoming one, NASCAR will go to the iconic Richmond Raceway. It’s going to be difficult to re-create the events at Bristol, but it will be intriguing to see how the organisers approach the event. Fans will certainly be quite invested to see the outcome too, don’t you think?

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