“If they tell me that enough, I’ll start to believe them,” Mike Kelley, JTG Daugherty Racing crew chief, said this after the Bristol race on Saturday. Goodyear adamantly insisted that the tires used now were the same as those in the spring. But the results were polar opposites—while drivers blew out tires 50 laps into the spring race, they persisted for 200 laps in the fall. So other NASCAR Cup veterans, including Richard Childress, cannot help but raise their eyebrows.

What exactly went down in March may be one of NASCAR’s biggest mysteries now. Either that or Goodyear is not telling us about the slightest adjustment that turned crucial. Childress prefers to believe the latter narrative as he tries to delve into the Bristol suspense.

Richard Childress draws suspicion to Goodyear

When the tire degradation happened in March at Bristol Motor Speedway, everyone was baffled. From the fans to Goodyear executives, people scratched their heads as to what went wrong. They assumed that since resin was injected into the concrete track instead of the PJ1 compound, the tires saw rapid falloff. However, the same method was replicated prior to the Bass Pro Shops Night Race—and Kyle Larson ended up leading 462 of 500 laps. Little to no lead changes and almost no chaos stripped the essence of Bristol.

So NASCAR experts are finding it hard to believe Goodyear’s claims. Richard Childress also joined that bandwagon recently, believing that the brand is still hiding an aspect of the tire fiasco from the public. He delivered his verdict in one sentence to Sportsnaut: “I don’t know if they changed the tiniest little thing in the tire and didn’t tell us but that’s sometimes how it works.” What we know is that resin was sprayed before practice, and by then, it was clear that the March phenomenon was out of reach. So NASCAR decided to spray PJ1 brand Trackbite on the bottom of the track just hours before the green flag.

But as we all saw, things did not come to fruition. Keith Rodden, interim Richard Childress Racing competition director, also agreed with Richard Childress. “There has to be something they can trace, the base materials that go into the tires. It was really hot at the test in July and they had the same issues. Then they put down some PJ1 and it got more life out of the tires. To come here this weekend and not have a single issue, it’s a real mystery.” Childress predicted the impending surprise in March before the race started, citing how Dale Earnhardt did not like Bristol’s concrete surface.

But the Childress fold is not alone in espousing this theory, as even the race-winning crew chief conceded to the shrouded mystery.

NASCAR is perplexed

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After Goodyear’s miracle unfolded in Bristol, efforts got underway to get to the bottom of it. They conducted tests at the World’s Fastest Half-Mile in July with six Cup Series drivers. Then they implemented experiments with option spring tires at the All-Star Race and at Richmond. But nothing could quite reach the level of the Bristol short track in spring. So even after Kyle Larson won the race at BMS on Saturday, his crew chief Cliff Daniels shared Richard Childress’ belief about the mystery. “I think it would be very hard to recreate the spring again because of the element of surprise. I do think it’s a real thing at the concrete tracks.”

Even Stewart-Haas Racing crew chief Drew Blickensderfer confessed his confusion. “The tire tests they did here with 14 car, it was just like March, you know. 50 laps, maybe before you had cords on both right sides so we came here, expecting that and lo and behold, we had 45 minutes of practice, and for 40 minutes of it, people were running the top and we ran 70 straight laps with no issues.” He added, “We could go 120 laps with no issues. Not sure what is completely different, but it’s not what … everybody expected.”

Evidently, Goodyear and NASCAR have truly created a perplexed atmosphere in the NASCAR Cup garage. Anything can be true at this point, even Richard Childress’ plot-thickening theory.