NASCAR Cup Series drivers and teams face considerable uncertainty as they prepare to take on Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend.
It's not that the track is unfamiliar territory; NASCAR's top series has competed on the paved Tennessee track 125 previous times. The concern is the amount of rubber laid on the surface throughout Sunday's race.
"The big guessing game is the tires," Brad Keselowski said, per Ford Performance. "We went there last spring, and the tires didn't hold up very well.
"The dynamics of the race shifted fairly drastically, and then we came back in the fall, and the tires didn't wear at all. That was another shift in the dynamics of the race, so trying to understand which one of those is going to be the case is probably the biggest question mark."
Last season's Bristol spring race, which Denny Hamlin won, was a stunning event. The tires wore at a level not seen in quite some time, and they forced drivers to manage their equipment. The result was a race featuring 54 lead changes.
Goodyear and NASCAR did not know what caused the excessive wear. After all, they brought the same tire compound from the 2023 Bristol Night Race. These tires just wore at an unexpected rate.
Heading into last season's playoff race at Bristol, some uncertainty remained. Goodyear and NASCAR had held a tire test before the pivotal race and put PJ1 traction compound on the racing surface. This extended the life of the tires, but the six participating drivers still saw falloff over 30-lap runs.
The drivers expected to see a decent amount of tire wear during the playoff race, but this did not happen. The race had eight lead changes as Kyle Larson led 462 of the 500 laps. He won by seven seconds after a final run lasting 163 laps.
This lack of tire wear baffled NASCAR competition officials. Elton Sawyer, NASCAR SVP of Competition, acknowledged as much during a weekly debrief with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
"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," Sawyer said.
"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."
One race last season had unprecedented tire wear. The other race was the standard Bristol, where track position was king. Goodyear is bringing the same tire compound this weekend that it has used since the 2023 Bristol Night Race, so what type of race will the fans see?
The drivers will have some idea after practice and qualifying on Saturday, but heading into the weekend, they still have quite a bit of uncertainty.
"I feel like you have to be in the mindset of change there because you go through it all weekend," Ryan Blaney said. "I don't think you ever feel fully comfortable at Bristol because it's changing so often throughout the weekend and the race. All you can do is do the best you can."