RELATED: Full results from Bristol
BRISTOL, Tenn. – While Carl Edwards was celebrating in Victory Lane, the rest of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates were left trying to decipher what caused multiple tire failures during Sunday’s running of the Food City 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
It also left Goodyear officials more than just a bit interested and by the end of the day, the official tire supplier had obtained tires from the teams of Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth to evaluate further.
Busch, the defending series champion and winner of back-to-back Sprint Cup races heading into Bristol, was the first to have a tire issue, his No. 18 Toyota breaking loose in Turn 2 barely 50 laps into the 500-lap event.
“Blew a right-front (expletive) tire,” Busch relayed over his team’s radio.
A second No. 18 spin was the result of contact from another car, but when a third incident unfolded at Lap 259, also for a tire issue, the car was too damaged to continue.
“I’m not sure what started it, but we were a little snug early on in the first run of the race,” Busch said. “As the car would run more and more laps it would get tighter and tighter, that’s the weirdest thing that I’ve felt all day and all weekend we haven’t had that problem. Not sure what happened.”
Kenseth led three times for 142 laps and appeared to be a favorite before his No. 20 Toyota slid up into the wall after a second tire problem on Lap 323. He was in third at the time of the Turn 2 crash. The team was able to make repairs, but he finished 36th, 40 laps behind the race winner.
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“We just keep blowing right front tires, I don’t know why,” Kenseth said afterward. “The first one was a little confusing, I knew I blew a right front, but I thought they were telling me it wasn’t flat so I was a little confused.
“This one just blew a lot earlier and the angle was a lot worse hitting the wall.”
Hamlin eventually had a tire go down, too, and got into the wall with less than 100 laps remaining.
Jason Ratcliff, crew chief for Kenseth, said it didn’t appear to be a wear issue and the bead temperatures weren’t overly concerning.
“But evidently it was just hot and we were working it hard and it just could’t take it,” he said. “That’s all I know.”
If the failure was a result of excessive heat, Ratcliff said, his team would have to do a better job of cooling its tires in the future.
“I can try to take some camber out to transmit the heat across the tire better – it’s not like it’s wearing out,” he said. “But the thing was, in practice we kept an eye on it and things looked really good. Same settings we ran last year with it and it was fine. It kind of caught us by surprise.”
Greg Stucker, Director of Race Tire Sales for Goodyear, said officials obtained tires from the three JGR Teams. The tires will be transported back to Akron, Ohio, for “thorough” analysis.
“Obviously, we’re working with the team to try to understand what it might be and solve the problem together,” Stucker said.
“The important thing is to try to help the team understand what is going on, and ourselves, as well.
“Until we get the tires broken down and get a good look at them [we won’t know]. They (JGR) understand nobody else is having the same issues. We need to try to understand that.”
Busch finished 38th while Hamlin wound up 20th.
His teammates’ tire issues didn’t go unnoticed by Edwards or his crew, but the race winner said crew chief Dave Rogers kept him abreast of the situation.
“I was nervous about it, but Dave did a good job of talking to me about how hard we were pushing the tires and what we had going on there,” Edwards said, “So I felt pretty comfortable.”