The Beautiful Disaster at Bristol – Did NASCAR’s Short Track Package Actually Work?

The best things in life sometimes have a unique way of showing up when you least expect them to, and in terms of short-track racing, the 2024 Food City 500 will go down as one of the best, at least in the Next-Gen era. Only last week, NASCAR introduced its short track racing package in Phoenix and it did not do a lot of good as far as most fans are concerned. However, on a real short track like Bristol, the racing was incredible. But how much was the new update responsible?

This question is important since after the race ended, no one was talking about the short-track package. The spotlights were on tires as they wore out quicker than they perhaps ever have in the Next-Gen era on a short track. Tire management was key and that’s what Denny Hamlin did better than anyone else to take the checkered flag.

Intense tire degradation rendered NASCAR’s aero package useless at Bristol

We’re not saying that the short track package did not have a part to play, but judging by the race, things might not have been very different even if NASCAR had not introduced the package. The effectiveness of the update depends on a lot of factors and grip is a big one. Without a stable grip, you won’t be able to move around and tires are the biggest talking point of the day.

The level of tire wear was out of this world and unheard of in the modern era. Some insiders have speculated the track to be the culprit with the resin laid out on the lower half of it. It was meant to be used to increase grip in cars, but as it turns out, it seemed to kill the tires entirely. So regardless of there being a much smaller floor and an inch-longer splitter, the only thing that a driver could do was manage their tires as best they could.

The new aero package was designed so that the cars did not feel heavy on the bottom and were able to slide around with ease in order to make passes. However, at the Bristol Motor Speedway this past Sunday, if you attempted to slide, you’d slide straight into the infield care center due to the massive tire degradation. Air blocking was not an option for anyone either. In simpler terms, it was a tire-preservation race that almost fully depended on strategy.

A problem with the Next-Gen cars being all equal to each other is that what mattered usually every single race weekend was track position, especially in short-track racing. But after the Bristol race, race winner Denny Hamlin said that it was the first time in a while that drivers had to just rely on their racecraft to get over the line as high up as possible. The pit crews were also extremely important as it was a race of strategy. Some of them, like Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr, and Brad Keselowski did a great job, but others like Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson suffered.

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Why were the three oldest racers so much better than the rest of the pack?

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The Food City 500 set a new record in NASCAR with an incredible 54 lead changes, the most in the history of the Cup Series on short tracks. That’s how massive the degradation was and teams were forced to come into the pits a lot more frequently than they might have expected. Who suffered as a result of this kind of race? The younger drivers. Ryan Blaney was furious after the race as he claimed Goodyear did not get the same tires that they did last year or maybe they didn’t test their tires.

But the people who gained say a lot about how times have changed in stock car racing. Back in the day, tire management was a big deal and today with all the stages and stage points up for grabs, it’s more about raw speed. So the drivers that have mostly raced in present conditions kept falling off while the three oldest drivers in the Cup Series finished in the top 3: Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr, and Brad Keselowski, and they enjoyed it very much.

Experience emerged victorious over youth, especially the drivers who raced in the tire management era of NASCAR. There was a lot of reference to Late Model Racing in the commentary box during the race,ariv as the driving style was similar. Brad Keselowski also had an interesting take on the style of racing as he compared it to local short-track races that he probably used to take part in in his younger years.

“It was interesting. Like a little short track race, you go to any of these local short tracks, that’s how you gotta race, you gotta take care of your stuff. It’s refreshing, it’s different. I liked that it takes something different every week, that’s what makes Cup so hard is you go in every week, some weeks you drive them till they burn down and this week you gotta care of them. It was fun,” Keselowski said after the race.

Even Denny Hamlin said that he grew up racing similar races at tracks in the mid-Atlantic region. “Yeah just, that’s what I grew up doing here in the short tracks of the whole mid-Atlantic, so South Boston, Martinsville, all those tracks, that’s what I grew up doing,” the driver of the #11 car said after getting out of his car. This win will give a lot of momentum to the veteran race car who has booked his place in the playoffs and looked rapid around the track.

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