The Food City Park 500 was a wild thriller. It went down as one of the most engaging short-track races in recent times, especially with the introduction of the Next-Gen platform. Shredded rubber piled on the track as the ‘marble’ layout took out even the most skilled drivers, like Kyle Busch, who lost their way in the fray. Speaking about the race on the most popular Dale Jr Download podcast, NASCAR’s golden boy, Chase Elliott, reflected on Sunday’s race and how extra tire wear changed the game, saying, “A few things that definitely are going to get lost in translation.”

Chase Elliott gets blunt and honest about Bristol and its “catastrophic blowouts”

While the driver is yet to pick up a win to break his winless streak after his untimely accident last year in Colorado, Chase Elliott is slowly improving his position after he picked up a well-placed top-10 finish at the 500-lap feature in Bristol. In fact, this is his first top-10 finish of the season, coming across the line eighth in a race where everyone was tested.

The newly repaved surface of the mile track coated with resin meant more tire wear, and the field quickly found themselves in the ‘marbles’ as the track surface chipped away the rubber-like cheese in a grater while NASCAR’s tire partner Goodyear scrambled to pile up stacks of tires in pit stops as teams improvised on the get-go to make up for it.

It was “fun” for Chase Elliott, who loved the bumper-to-bumper, close-quarter action returning to the short track. Speaking to Dale Jr he said, “I think there are a few things that definitely are going to get lost in translation, one when you have tire wear you didn’t have these catastrophic blowouts. You knew. something was wrong you know, where most of the time when we have tire failures, you’re just cruising along like normal next thing you know, pop, you lost a tire, so…I think that’s an important piece of it is.”

“You know you’re hurting something because you have tire wear, so you know, you need to stop or start guarding against it, or you know a failure is coming. I think that’s an important piece of… you’re not having big blowout type crashes. Um, the grip level was so low and there was grip, but you had to go so slow not to hurt your tire; it took the aero out of it, which I thought was really fun because…And then, you gosh, I mean, we could be all over each other on each other’s doors; we could be; you could actually get to bumper to bumper,” said the 2020 Cup Series champion. 

“Aint seen that in a while,” Dale Jr discusses the happenings in Bristol

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The short-track action at BMS was nothing like what the fandom or the drivers anticipated it to be. Even after the first 30 laps of the race, drivers started pitting, and the radios got lively with drivers and teams relaying developments and sharing information back and forth. The extra tire wear certainly was unexpected, and everything from the pit stop, the pit interval, the pit speed, and the pace of the car had to be on point for a driver to gain the upper hand.

This gave the off-throttle time back to the drivers, bringing more action to the table. Dale Jr mentioned his point after Chase Elliott gave his thoughts. The JRM co-owner said, “The race is going on right and we’re like 40 laps in and I saw somebody pop somebody in the a**  in the middle of the corner. I was like, ain’t seen that in a while and it was like you could do that if you really wanted to say hey man need you to move. Like you could get all you could run in there and hit him. You could not do that before.” 

To which Chase Elliott replied, “No, and you won’t be able to probably ever again. No, probably, they’ll go back with the biggest brick of a tire, and it’ll be as hard as this table would be so scared to death that, you know, because they don’t want that, you know, to happen again.”

READ MORE: After HMS’ All-Star Tease, Chase Elliott Will Pay Tribute to Dale Jr’s Daytona Glory in Darlington

With NASCAR efficiently finding a sweet spot on its much-criticized short track package, the question that remains is, can NASCAR repeat the same with other shorter bull rings or will they look for other options? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.