Last weekend's race at Bristol Motor Speedway lacked the extensive tire wear that NASCAR expected to see. This is something that has baffled competition officials.
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, acknowledged as much during a Tuesday morning appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. He said that the company is disappointed for its fans and that a meeting will take place with Goodyear to figure out what happened.
"We're baffled, to be perfectly honest," Sawyer said. "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.
"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."
The Cup Series teams had an extended practice session on Friday afternoon in preparation for the Round of 16 elimination race. This session served as the first indicator that the race would not have the same level of falloff as the Bristol spring race, which featured excessive tire wear and 54 lead changes.
The practice session also didn't bear similarities to the Goodyear tire test on July 16-17. Drivers such as Austin Cindric and Alex Bowman left the practice session saying that the playoff race would be the "standard Bristol."
Sunday's race had a noticeable absence of tire wear and passing opportunities. This race had a mere eight lead changes as Kyle Larson led 462 of the 500 laps. He won by seven seconds as the final green flag run of the race lasted 163 laps.
Drivers who committed penalties, such as Martin Truex Jr., were unable to recover due to all of the cars running similar speeds. There were no concerns about conserving tires, so there were no noticeable speed differences.
"I think the big thing we have to keep in mind is these things happen throughout time, whether it's a race event or you go into any type of sporting event and, as you guys said earlier, you'll have a blowout every now and then," Sawyer added.
"We just need to figure out what happened, how we're going to correct it, and move forward because we have had some really good short track racing, as well as road course racing, this year. Goodyear's tire has really contributed a great deal to that."
What is next for NASCAR as Martinsville and Phoenix loom in the distance? Both tracks are one mile or less in length, so there are automatic concerns about the inability to pass.
As Sawyer explained, the Round of 8 elimination race at Martinsville will feature a different tire than the spring race. The teams will have the "option" tire from Richmond, which Sawyer said was Goodyear's softest tire yet. This will be the main tire for Martinsville.
The championship race, however, will not have a tire change. Sawyer said that NASCAR wants teams to "have an understanding" of what they will face while battling for the biggest prize in the sport.